S. G. and E. L. ELBERT
"i.. s i.
I #ip
Jlit illt umriaut
NV KA2EARI13E_S^ COMAN
SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
OP
JOHN A. ANDREW,
AS GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS,
TO WHICH IS ADDED THE
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS OP GOVERNOR ANDREW, DELIVERED
UPON RETIRING FROM OFFICE, JANUARY 5, 1866, ON
THE SUBJECT OF RECONSTRUCTION OF THE
STATES RECENTLY IN REBELLION.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON.
Camfirttrjje: Wiibcvgilst \Bxt$g.
1868.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
A. G. Browne, Jr.
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
To
GENERAL U. S. GRANT,
THIS SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE OF ONE WHO
WAS HIS FRIEND, AND WHOSE FRIEND HE WAS;
AND THIS EDITION OF THE VALEDICTORY
GOVERNOR
SSION, RES1
INSCRIBED.
" The tendency of the hour is towards Grant. And that is best. It is
not the ideal good. It is bad for the country that he must leave his pres-
ent post, — bad for him, the soldier, to try and to endure the hard fate
which awaits him, in civil life. But it is the apparently best practical good
the country can have. And Grant is so square and honest a man that I
believe he is bound to be right in the main, anywhere. '' — Governor An-
drew, October 27j 1867, three days before his death.
PEEFACE.
The following sketch comprises an article
which appeared in the " North American Review "
for January, 1868, and now is reprinted at the
request of many friends of the late Governor
Andrew, who desire to possess it in a separate
form. To it now are added full copies of cor-
respondence and documents to which the neces-
sary limits of the former publication then per-
mitted only brief reference. Use has also been
made of other articles concerning Governor
Andrew which have appeared since this was
originally prepared ; chiefly, of one (the only
defect of which is its brevity) written by his
pastor, James Freeman Clarke, and printed in
the February number of " Harper's Magazine."
In every instance in which the words or facts of
VI PREFACE.
others are thus employed, due credit has been
given to them by name.
This book has no pretension to the character
of a full biography of Governor Andrew. Such
a biography, at the request of the family of the
Governor, is now in course of preparation by
the experienced and accomplished hands of Mr.
Edwin P. Whipple, whose work cannot fail to
become of standard value in the literature and
history of New England. The only merit to
which the present writer lays claim, is that of
personal and intimate knowledge of the facts
which he has recorded in the following sketch ;
hastily and imperfectly, no doubt, for it has been
prepared during the few hours which he could
spare from professional duties, but in such a man-
ner, nevertheless, as he hopes may entitle it to
friendly regard from those at whose request it
has been written.
To it is added the valedictorv address of Gov-
ernor Andrew to the General Court of Massa-
chusetts, upon retiring from office ; the senti-
ments and logic of which he maintained, without
PREFACE. vii
qualification, to the day of his death; and by
which he expressed a wish that his title to fame
in the history of his country should be determined.
The political issues of the war have produced no
speech or essay on the subject of the reconstruc-
tion of the Rebel States more wise and humane
and statesmanlike, or more worthy to be studied
by the people of every section of the country on
the eve of the presidential contest of the present
year.
The photographer of the likeness of the Gov-
ernor, which precedes the title-page, is Mr.
Geo. K. Warren of Cambridgeport, Mass.
ALBERT G. BROWNE, Jr.
( Military Secretary to Governor
( Andrew during the War.
Boston, April, 1868.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
The position of Governor Andrew in the history of Massachu-
setts. — His parentage, birth, school days, and college
course. — Professional study with Mr. Fuller. — Admission
to the Suffolk Bar. — His own expression of the duties,
privileges, and opportunities, of the young men of America,
in their relation to their country 1
CHAPTER II.
Professional career. — Training in public law. — Testimony as
a witness before the Congressional Committee of Investiga-
tion into John Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry. — Theory
of duty towards unpopular causes. — Experience in cases of
domestic relations. — Professional generosity. — Philanthrop-
ic services. — Devotion to the Anti-Slavery cause. — Con-
servative constitution of his mind. — Association with the
religious society of James Freeman Clarke. — Letter to Mr.
Garrison. — Abstinence from political office. — Service as
State Representative in 1859. — He leads the Legislature. —
He declines a judicial appointment. — Nomination for Gov-
ernor. — Sympathy with John Brown. — Its influence in the
campaign. — His election. — His share in the Chicago Con-
vention of 1860. — His inaugural address as Governor. —
His theory of the main issue involved in the rebellion . . 13
CHAPTER III.
Massachusetts Militia prepared for service. — Cooperation of
other New England Governors invited. — Confidential un-
: CONTENTS.
PAGE
derstanding established with General Scott. — Troops held
in readiness to be sent to Washington at counting of elec-
toral vote for President — The Governor's confidants at
Washington. — The beginning of the War. — March of the
Massachusetts Militia to Washington. — General review of
the services of the Governor to the country during the war.
— His counsel of sympathy with the Federal Government. —
His unofficial advisers. — Vice President Hamlin summoned
to Boston. — Union of all classes in Massachusetts in sup-
port of the war, under the Governor's leadership. — Mr.
Evarts's description of his leadership. — Speech of Fletcher
Webster on Bunker Hill. — Departure of the Twelfth Regi-
ment . . . . . . 28
CHAPTER IV.
Arrangement and furniture of Executive rooms at the State
House. — Freedom of access of people to the Governor. —
His catholic relation to all men. — Sir Frederick Bruce finds
him surrounded by colored people. — His habits of busi-
ness. — Not an inch of red tape. — His daily receptions. —
His informal manner. — The knapsack man. — Testimony of
Mr. Hillard to the purity of his life. — Testimony of Mr.
Dana to his incorruptibility and humanity. — His power of
endurance. — Neglect of private affairs. — His love for chil-
dren. — A visit to the White House at night. — Rigid exac-
tion of responsibility and work from others. — The neglected
pardon. — Care of penal institutions. — His relations with
the Executive Council 40
CHAPTER V.
The Governor's habits of diet. — Liking of tea. — His opposi-
tion to a Prohibitory Liquor Law. — Extracts from his argu-
ment. — He abstains from presenting the subject to the Leg-
islature while Governor, lest he should divide the people
from support of the war. — His message to the Legislature
on the morality of sale of liquors as a beverage. — Union in
sustaining the War paramount to all other issues. — He
CONTENTS. xi
PAGE
combats Western hostility to New England. — His theory
of the destiny of New England in event of success of the
Rebellion. — His views of the relations of the British Prov-
inces to New England 57
CHAPTER VI.
His antagonism with opponents of emancipation and the use
of colored troops. — Support of Fremont and Hunter in free-
ing slaves. — Letter in defense of Hunter. — Speech at
Martha's Vineyard. — His influence on the President for
Emancipation. — The Proclamation of September 22, 1862.
— The Altoona Convention. — Address of the Governors
to the President. — His independence of partisan influences
and considerations. — Opposition to secret societies. — Jeal-
ousy towards him of old party leaders. — His vetoes. — Offi-
cial appointments and removals, civil and military. — The
duty of allegiance the solution of the problem of emancipa-
tion. — Correspondence with General McClellan concerning
exclusion of fugitive slaves from our military lines. — Cor-
respondence with General Butler concerning proper relations
of our military forces to servile insurrection in Maryland in
April, 1861 68
CHAPTER VII.
He obtains official sanction of the Federal Government to the
enlistment of colored troops. — He raises the Fifty-fourth
and Fifty fifth Massachusetts (colored) regiments. — Contest
for their equal rights with white troops in pay and rank. —
Antagonism with the War Department on these questions. —
Appeal to the President. — The Attorney General overrules
the legal position of the Secretary of War. — Correspondence
with the President. — Correspondence with Thaddeus Ste-
vens. — He finally triumphs and secures the rights of his
colored soldiers. — His aid of enlistment of colored soldiers
everywhere. — He procures organization of Freedmen's In-
quiry Commission. — Services in behalf of the freedmen. —
xh ' CONTENTS.
PAGE
Opposition to system of arbitrary arrests in Loyal States. —
He declines to take part in the Surratt trial .... 103
CHAPTER VIII.
Reverence for history of Massachusetts. — Fondness of old as-
sociations. — Official dignity. — His body-guard. — Care of
Harvard College. — Theories concerning education in Mas-
sachusetts. — Schools of agriculture and mechanic arts. —
Letter of Count de Gasparin. — Views of the true future of
New England. — Testimony of Mr. Evarts and Mr. Godwin
to the hopes entertained of his future national career . . 116
CHAPTER IX.
His sensibility. — Anxiety concerning conduct of affairs at
Washington. — Causes of his death. — His cheerful and
mirthful disposition. — Special subjects of study. — Favorite
amusements. — Administration of domestic affairs of the
State. — Opposition to capital punishment. — Communica-
tions to the Legislature. — His manuscript. — His social con-
versation. — His eloquence- — His pecuniary means. — He
resumes practice at the bar on retiring from office, refusing
various public stations. — Familiarity with the Bible. — Re-
ligious catholicity. — The return of the flags . . . 138
CHAPTER X.
Valedictory address. — Description of the occasion. — He- op-
poses political proscription, whether of white or of black
men. — He is not in accord with either President or Con-
gress. — Course of public temper comes to correspond with
his opinions. — Expectations of his connection with the next
Federal Administration. — His natural capacity for leader-
ship. — His estimate of the character of President Lincoln.
— Comparison of his own character with that estimate . 158
Valedictory Address . . . .... 167
SKETCH
OF THE
OFFICIAL LIFE OF GOVERNOR ANDREW.
CHAPTER I.
The position of Governor Andrew in the history of Massachusetts.
— His parentage, birth, school days, and college course. — Pro-
fessional study with Mr. Fuller. — Admission to the Suffolk Bar.
— His own expression of the duties, privileges, and opportu-
nities of the young men of America, in their relation to their
country.
The traveller approaching Boston by the
Providence Railroad traverses, nine miles from
the city, a beautiful plain, through which wan-
ders the slender stream of the Neponset among
rich meadows studded w^ith noble elms. In the
background rise the piny slopes of the Blue Hill
of Milton. From its ridges the climber looks
eastward far out on the broad Bay of Massachu-
setts, beyond the capital and the islands of its
harbor; and westward, over line upon line of
swelling hills, each succeeding range fading in a
fainter purple. Here and there rise higher sum-
2 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
mits, like Monadnock. By daylight, on the
nearer ranges are seen the roofs of a hundred
towns, the points of innumerable steeples, the
shafts of countless chimneys of busy factories.
By night, the factory buildings glitter like illu-
minated palaces, while the dwellinghouses clus-
tered in the villages shine with a steadier and
more homely glow. As the sun sinks behind
Wachusett into the Connecticut, brilliant gleams
flash over the sea from the lighthouses of the
Great Brewster and Minot's Ledge. More than
half of the million people of Massachusetts dwell
within the boundaries of that landscape.
In the centre of the plain stand long rows of
rough wooden barracks. The military precision
of their order discloses unmistakably their former
use. One half of them are now empty and
rotting in the Spring rains. The other half are
overflowing with an Irish tenantry, some ardent
speculator having bought them all in hope of
developing a permanent village from so unprom-
ising a nucleus.
Soon the railroad train leaves Readville and its
camp-ground in the distance, and shelters itself
at Boston in a station from which the passenger
steps out upon the old parade-ground of the
Common. Innocent players of base ball and
cricket have trodden off the turf in patches, until
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 3
the half bare ground looks like the well-worn
covering of some ancient trunk. Over the elms
and lindens swells the dome of the State House.
In the western wing of the building, in front of
the windows of the Council Chamber, painters
are at work, on swinging platforms. Within,
carpenters and masons are busy with plane and
trowel. Soon, in the remodeling, all trace of
the old. apartments will be lost. The last Legis-
lature even threatened the destruction of the
whole building ; and, if its history is to end in
our day, perhaps then was the fit time. It began
with the great Governor who, on the 19th of
April, 1775, uttered the exulting cry, " O,
what a glorious morning ! " and it well might
end with him who had the fortune and the cour-
age to repeat that cry with equal exultation, on
the 19th of April, 1861. When the Readville
Camp was last noisy with soldiery, and the pa-
rade-ground of the Common was dark with blue
lines of regiments returned from real war, coun-
cil was last held in that old Chamber by the
greatest of the twenty successors of Samuel
Adams.
Let it now change, like the camp and the once
green parade. To the new era of Peace all the
" modern improvements," which architect and
carpenter and mason are making in the old build-
4 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
ing, fitly belong. So also to a new era belongs
the enterprise of the speculator, to change into
a peaceful hamlet the barracks where the great
Governor of our modern day organized a hun-
dred thousand Massachusetts soldiers for the
war; and on the parade-ground, where they
passed him in review, the school-boy playing
with his ball and wicket is a fit representative
of the new times. But, however great these
changes, this generation must wholly pass away
before the traveller crossing the Readville Plain,
or the loiterer under the elms of the Charles
Street Mall, or the visitor to the halls of the
State Government, shall cease to recall and asso-
ciate with the scene the figure and the face of
Governor Andrew.
John Albion Andrew, the twenty-first Gov-
ernor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
was born at Windham, a small town near Lake
Sebago, about fifteen miles from Portland, May
31, 1818, two years before the organization of
Maine as a separate State. He died at Boston,
October 30, 1867. The family was English in
origin, descending in America from Robert An-
drew, who immigrated to Rowley Village, now
Boxford, in Essex County, Massachusetts, and
died there in 1668. It was connected by mar-
riage with several of the famous ancient families
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 5
of the Colony, — a grandmother of the Governor
being a granddaughter of the brave Captain
William Pickering, who commanded the Prov-
ince Galley in 1707, to protect the fisheries
against the French and Indians, and the mother
of her husband being Mary Higginson, a direct
descendant from Francis Higginson, the organ-
izer of the first church in the Colony. A por-
trait of this old clergyman, his ancestor, depicted
with snow-white hair and gray moustache, clad in
a black robe, holding a book in one hand, on the
index finger of which a large signet-ring is dis-
played, hung over the mantel on the chimney of
the Council Chamber during the whole of Gov-
ernor Andrew's administration. The grandfather
of the Governor, whose name he bore, was a
silversmith, and afterwards a successful merchant
in the old and wealthy city of Salem. He re-
moved to Windham, and died there in 1791. His
son Jonathan was born in Salem, and lived there
until manhood, when he, too, went to Windham,
and married Nancy G. Pierce, a teacher in the
Fryeburg Academy, where Daniel Webster also
was once a teacher. She died in 1832 ; and
soon afterwards he removed to Boxford, where
he died in 1849. The Governor was their oldest
son.
He was a school-boy at Windham and at Sa-
6 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
lem, and then a student in Bowdoin College.
Of his college life Mr. Peleg W. Chandler spoke
as follows in his felicitous eulogy at the Suffolk
Bar meeting, held on November 4, 1867, after
the Governor's death : —
" He took no rank as a scholar, and seemed to
have not the slightest ambition for academical
distinction ; he had no part at Commencement.
This rosy, chub-faced boy, genial, affectionate,
and popular, gave no indications of future re-
nown, or of that ability, energy, and breadth
of view for which he is now so celebrated. He
was not regarded as dull, very much the con-
trary ; but he seemed to be indifferent to the
ordinary routine of college honors, possessed of
that happy temperament which enabled him then
and for many years afterwards to pass quietly
along without a touch of the carking cares and
temptations that wait on the ambitious aspirations
of the young as well as the old."
Immediately after graduating at college in the
class of 1837, he came to Boston to study law,
and prepared for the profession in the office of
Henry H. Fuller, an uncle of Margaret Fuller.
Of the relation between master and pupil, Mr.
Chandler said : —
" It always seemed to me that his character
was much affected by contact with that somewhat
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 7
remarkable and much misunderstood lawyer.
Mr. Fuller was a man of most genial tempera-
ment, an excellent scholar (second in the class
of which Edward Everett was first), of wide
reading and extensive acquirements ; a man who
loved young men, and aided and assisted them in
every way he could ; and also of such marked
peculiarities, of such wonderful crotchets and
such heroic obstinacy, that he naturally and es-
pecially attracted, and in some respects almost
fascinated, his pupil. The attraction was mutual ;
they became almost like brothers. The student
sat at the same office table with the master, en-
tered into all the business affairs, wrote letters
from dictation, and they seemed in fact like one
person. Mr. Fuller had an extensive acquaint-
ance with all sorts of men. He knew the per-
sonal history of almost every citizen of the town ;
and of all public characters, living and dead, he
had a decided opinion, which he never hesitated
to pronounce on any suitable occasion. Mr.
Andrew, with the curiosity of a young man fresh
from the country, took this all in ; but what is
remarkable, while some of the peculiar traits of
the master stuck to the pupil, the latter had de-
cided opinions of his own, especially in regard
to American slavery, which were sometimes in
ludicrous contrast with those of his senior. Mr.
S SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
Fuller was a conservative of conservatives. He
stood by the ancient ways, even in the cut of his
coat and the shape of his hat ; his ruffled shirt
and white cravat were significant of a past gen-
eration. Mr. Andrew soon became interested in
many of the reform movements of the day, and
was as firm and as peculiar in one direction as
his friend was in another."
Then followed twenty years of steady practice
at the Suffolk Bar, to which he was admitted in
1840. It was not a conspicuous career, but in
it his biographer will find the marks of all the
great qualities he afterwards displayed in office ;
for never was a life more consistent. In after
years, in 1864, then at the height of his renown
as Governor, he found time, even among the
harassing cares of office, to prepare and deliver
to the class graduating from the Medical School
of Harvard College, their valedictory address,
into which he condensed much of the philos-
ophy of living which was matured in his own
mind during this long term of patient profes-
sional labor.
" In no community in the world," said he, " is
there brighter promise for competent young men
than there is here ; for the sphere is so vast, the
ways are all open, and all possibilities are free to
all men. It is only necessary that a young man
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 9
of education should be willing to serve faithfully,
to waste no time in dreams and passionate long-
ings, but to make the most of himself by being
useful and by proving his capacity, as occasions
naturally occur. His time will surely come.
There is never a surplus of competent and trust-
worthy men. They are always in request.
Places are always in waiting for them. But
the men themselves do not always at the right
time appear."
" There is nothing more practically and simply
true than that success, abiding and secure, the
happiness and usefulness of a professional career,
is proportioned to the purity, singleness, and
generosity of the purpose with which it is pur-
sued. No thinking man has lived to middle age
who has not seen, with his own eyes, brilliant
powers thrown away, capacity for lasting impres-
sion on society and for solid happiness as the
reward of real good accomplished, made the for-
feit of the poor and selfish pursuit of changeful
Fortune, or uncertain Fame, or inglorious Ease.
What a defeat is such a life ! Will you treat
your profession as a trade out of which merely to
make your bread, while you indulge every whim
or fancy of a mind to which duty is irksome and
fruitful toil a mere fatigue ? Then you sacrifice
the hope of honorable competence, of solid rep-
10 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
utation, the sweet and infinite satisfactions of a
worthy life. Will you use it as the mere instru-
ment of sordid gain ? Then you sacrifice your
love for Science, who stands waiting to feed you
with immortal food, and to open the rich store-
house of all her truth, while you dwarf your soul
to the worship of the very dust she treads under
her feet. Will you make your profession only a
stepping-stone to preferment ? Then you strangle
the spiritual and intellectual progeny which might
bless your declining age, in order to reign for a
while the heartless, aimless pretender of an hour,
in a hollow and deceitful prosperity.
" The solicitude with which we naturally con-
template the future, if it does not degenerate
into weak anxiety, is not unreasonable. The
desire of excellence is not wholly to be discon-
nected from a sense of the value of other men's
good opinion. A certain yearning for a proper
sphere for generous ambition, a true appreciation
of the rewards of meritorious effort, a manly tone
of self-respect, are all, of course, desirable, nor
are they, in any sense, unworthy. But when one
sees so many great and good things waiting to be
done, lying unaccomplished only for want of the
men of faith, patience, intellect, and action ;
when we consider the vastness and variety of
opportunity opening to the young men of Amer-
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 11
ica, who have really fitted themselves to serve
their country and do their part in strengthening
or enriching it, who are willing to buckle on their
armor and contend for a brave mastery ; I think
it seems as if self-interest, even, advises only that
they should do justice to their own capacities and
the means lying open before them, throw aside
all weakness and all narrowness, and be faithful
to themselves, generous to mankind, considering
how bountiful is the Divine Providence to them.
There is a margin for mistake and misadventure,
for which all of us must allow. But it is usually
and on the whole but a margin only. We must
be willing to accept our mischances, and even
our own errors, reckoning them for what in truth
they are to courageous, persevering men, as illus-
trations of the limitations of everything which is
simply human and not supernatural.
" Gentlemen, as citizens of a country larger
than Europe, possessing elements of greater
wealth and greater power than Europe, of ca-
pacity to feed and support a population exceed-
ing the present numbers of the human race, you
have only to develop yourselves and to apply
your own powers and acquirements. The first
duty of the citizen is to regard himself as made
for his country, not to regard his country as made
foi* him. If he will but subordinate his own
12 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
self-hood, his own ambition, enough to perceive
how great is his country and how infinitely less
is he, is it not manifest that he presently becomes
a sharer in her glory, a partaker of her great-
ness ? He is strengthened by her strength, and
inspired by her intellectual and moral life.
While he contributes his little to the grand
treasury of her various wealth of power and
possession, he draws therefrom vigor and support
with every breath he breathes. Standing utterly
alone, what man is anything? But associated
with his fellows, he receives the instruments, the
means, the opportunities, and the facilities for
action.''
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 13
CHAPTER II.
Professional career. — Training in public law. — Testimony as a
witness before the Congressional Committee of Investigation
into John Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry. — Theory of duty
towards unpopular causes. — Experience in cases of domestic re-
lations. — Professional generosity. — Philanthropic services. —
Devotion to the Anti-Slavery cause. — Conservative constitution
of his mind. — Association with the religious society of James
Freeman Clarke. — Letter to Mr. Garrison. — Abstinence from
political office. — Service as State Representative in 1859. — He
leads the Legislature. — He declines a judicial appointment. —
Nomination for Governor. — Sympathy with John Brown. — Its
influence in the campaign. — His election. — His share in the
Chicago Convention of 1860. — His inaugural address as Gov-
ernor. — His theory of the main issue involved in the rebellion.
In the latter years of his professional practice
before becoming Governor, he was engaged in a
remarkable succession of cases involving high
questions of constitutional law. In 1854 he de-
fended the parties indicted at Boston for rescuing
the fugitive slave Burns ; in 1855 he defended
the British Consul at Boston against the charge
of violating our neutrality laws during the Cri-
mean War ; in 1856 he argued the petition for a
writ of habeas corpus to test the legality of the
imprisonment of the Free State officers of Kansas
14 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
at Topeka. More lately, in 1859, he initiated
and directed the measures for the legal defense
of John Brown in Virginia ; and in 1860 he was
of counsel for Francis B. Sanborn, at his dis-
charge by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts
from the custody of the United States Marshal,
by whom he had been arrested on a warrant
from the Vice-President of the United States to
compel his appearance before the Congressional
Committee of Investigation into the affair at
Harper's Ferry.
He had himself appeared before that Commit-
tee as a witness on February 9, of the same year,
and been subjected to an examination conducted
chiefly by Jefferson Davis, then Senator from
Mississippi, and Senator Mason of Virginia, as
to his motives for taking so much trouble and
expense in John Brown's behalf. In the light
of the subsequent career of his examiners some
of their questions and his answers have a peculiar
significance after the eight intervening years.*
* The following are extracts from the official report of his exam-
ination : —
" By the Chairman, Mr. Mason. Question. Will you state, sir,
whether your reason for volunteering your aid in this matter, and
the representations that you made to others, or what induced you
to act as you state you did act, was founded on the impression that
Brown was not going to have a fair or just trial, or was it founded
on a disposition to aid in his defense, because of his career against
the institution of slavery?
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 15
On his theory of duty as a lawyer, he never
hesitated to defend unpopular and even odious
causes. In illustration, besides his defense of the
" Answer. Well, sir, I know —
" Question. In other words, if you had no impressions that the
trial was not one fairly and properly conducted, would you have
acted as you did, in getting money for his defense, only from a
desire to serve him because of the career in which he was em-
barked ?
" Answer. I am quite clear on that point, putting the question in
that way. As you, sir, first proposed the question, it was a little
complex and intricate. Had I felt that Captain Brown and his
associates were in the way to a full and complete opportunity for a
fair judicial investigation into all their rights according to the laws
of the jurisdiction within which they were, I have no reason to sup-
pose that I should have interfered. I should have felt that I had
no occasion to interfere. I had known about old Mr. Brown for
several years, and I approved a great deal which I had heard of
touching his career in Kansas; I thought he had been an honest,
and conscientious, and useful assistant of the Free State cause. My
impression of him was derived from many sources. I had never
seen him but once in my life, and then only for a few moments. I
say in frankness that I felt a certain sympathy for a man who had,
as I thought, been useful in behalf of a great cause in which I was
interested. I had no sympathy with his peculiar conduct touching
which he was then indicted. I felt injured by that, personally, as
a Republican.
" Question. Suppose the only difficulty connected with his trial,
as you heard, had been the want of means, would you and your
friends then have volunteered to furnish the means to employ
counsel ?
" Answer. It is not easy, Mr. Chairman, for one man to speak as
to another's motives. I can only speak as to my own ; and you
have now put a question which embarrasses me to this extent : It
is unpleasant for a man to blow the trumpet of his own virtue, and
I am sorry to be asked to state to what extent I may be a benevolent
man, or otherwise. I can only give you one little circumstance, as
16 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
British Consul, may be named his advocacy of
Burnham, in 1860, against the inquisition of the
Massachusetts Legislature, and also his defense
in the United States courts, the same year, of
an illustration of what I might do under such circumstances. Last
year a man was convicted in Boston for piracy, and sentenced to
be hanged. I had never seen him, to speak to him, in my life, nor
did I know by sight any person related to him in any way. After
other efforts had been made, I* devoted some weeks, at least, to
preparation, and came to Washington, at my own expense, without
fee or reward, or the hope of any, in order to press upon the Attorney
General and the President those considerations which I deemed
proper to be considered in support of the application for executive
clemency. The man's life was saved. I never spoke to him until
I accompanied Mr. Marshal Freeman to his cell, and assisted in the
reading of the President's warrant of commutation. I have some-
times done just such things as that on other occasions. I do not
profess to be a particularly benevolent man, but I mention that as
an illustration of what I might do, even for a stranger."
In answer to further questions the witness said : —
" I think that Captain Brown's foray into Virginia was a fruit of
the Kansas tree. I think that he and his associates had been edu-
cated up to the point of making an unlawful, and even unjustifi-
able, attack upon the people of a neighboring State — had been
taught to do so, and educated to do so by the attacks which the
Free State men in Kansas suffered from people of the slaveholding
States. And, since the gentleman has called my attention again
to that subject, I think the attack which was made against repre-
sentative government in the assault upon Senator Sumner in Wash-
ington, which, so far as I could learn from the public press, was, if
not justified, at least winked at throughout the South, was an act
of very much greater danger to our liberties and to civil society
than the attack of a few men upon neighbors over the borders of a
State. I suppose that the State of Virginia is wealthy and strong,
and brave enough to defend itself against the assaults of any un-
organized unlawful force.
" Mr. Davis. The sympathy which you say you expressed or
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 17
the notorious slaver-yacht Wanderer against for-
feiture. In questions of domestic relations perhaps
no member of our bar had a more extensive
practice, or made deeper study of the law. His
mind thus was busy always with the higher prob-
lems of philosophic jurisprudence, and his course
of practice led hi'm to comprehend thoroughly
the mutual relations of the government and the
people in all questions of personal liberty, so that
when, in mature life, he was called to be Gov-
ernor, he was already a well-trained political
philosopher.
Much might be written of the cheerful kind-
ness with which his professional skill and experi-
ence were always at the service of the poor. The
writer of one of the notices of his life has truly
said : —
i felt towards John Brown, is that which you felt for a soldier engaged
in such a civil war as that which you describe in Kansas.
" The Witness. That would hardly be a fair statement of my
feeling.
" Mr. Davis. I wish merely to get what your feeling is. It is not
a statement, but an inquiry.
" The Witness. I am constitutionally peaceable, and by opinion
very much of a peace man, and I have very little faith in deeds of
violence, and very little sympathy with them except as the ex-
tremest and direst necessity. My sympathy, so far as I sympathized
with Captain Brown, was on account of what I believed to be heroic
and disinterested services in defense of a good and just cause, and
in support of the rights of persons who were treated with unjust
aggression."
2
18 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
" Whoever had no other friend found it easy
to appeal to his generosity. He showed this at
the bar, where more than orice he took up causes
which hardly another lawyer would have touched,
because otherwise the individual would have had
no advocate and no hearing. At a time when
the counsel for the wife in a divorce case was
pretty sure to be paid less than the actual ex-
penses of court, he was counsel for the wife in
innumerable cases. The amount of his gratu-
itous professional services during his twenty years
of practice will probably never be known. Cer-
tain it is that had he received full fees in all of
them, he would not have been forced after five
years of most distinguished official services, to
return to the toil and drudgery of the bar in
order to support his family."
And much also might be said of his service
with organized philanthropic associations during
this long period of twenty years — for which,
however, this is not the place. The records of
the societies for the amelioration of prison dis-
cipline, for the care of convicts after discharge
from confinement, for the abolition of capital
punishment, for the reform of inebriates, for the
protection of sailors, for the promotion of peace ;
and of numerous others of kindred nature ; bear
testimony to the fidelity with which he served
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 19
as a friend those who, except for him and such
as he, were friendless.
From boyhood, he was devoted to the Anti-
Slavery cause, and was an ally of all its cham-
pions, no matter by what political names they
styled themselves or were styled by others. But
the constitution of his mind was not destructive.
He never believed in pulling down any valuable
institution, because it was perverted to be a
shelter for wrong, without first seeking if it could
not be purged of the wrong and preserved with
a value added by the purging.
His pastor, and close and constant friend,
James Freeman Clarke, with whose religious
society he associated himself soon after he came
to Boston, has recorded a characteristic example
of the application of this disposition to a dispute
which occurred in the society, in 1845, in con-
sequence of an exchange of pulpits with Theodore
Parker. A part of the members had threatened
to secede for that reason, and in the debate which
followed this threat, the Governor, then a young
man of twenty-seven, made a speech which Mr.
Clarke describes as " seeming at the time as
powerful in argument and persuasive in appeal
as any I ever heard." The chief charge against
Theodore Parker being that, as he rejected the
supreme authority of the Bible, he could not
20 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
properly be regarded as a Christian minister, the
Governor cited the examples of the Roman
Catholics, the Quakers, and the Swedenborgians,
in denial of the validity of the charge ; and
argued, moreover, that the Unitarian church did
not make faith in the Scripture its foundation,
but faith in Christ, however known.
" Finally," says Mr. Clarke, " he pleaded that
the true way to treat all whom we supposed to
be in error was not to go from them, but to go
to them ; not shut them out, but take them in.
Nor was it the right way, he contended, to leave
a church because the majority conscientiously
differed from us, but to remain in it and con-
vince them. We never can do so much good by
going only with those who agree with us ; for if
only those who agree together go together, each
party in the church hardens itself in its own
opinions, and truth and error never come in con-
tact."
At last, said he, in closing : " Brethren ! I do
not believe in the principle of come-outer-ism. I
am not a come-outer. I am a stay-in er. I shall
not leave this church because the majority may
differ from me on this or other questions. You
may, indeed, turn me out ; but you cannot make
me go out of my own accord. If you turn me
out of your meetings I will stand on the outside,
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 21
and look in through the window, and see you.
If I cannot do this, I will come the next day and
sit in the place where you have been, and com-
mune with you so. I cannot be excommunicated,
for I shall continue thus always in your com-
munion."
It was this quality of the Governor's mind
which prevented him always from identifying
himself with the sect of Abolitionists, who bore
the name of Mr. Garrison, although his opinions
on the subject of slavery were as decided as those
of their great leader, with whom he maintained a
friendship which continued unbroken to the close
of his life. The Asperities of speech and indis-
criminate denunciations which were frequent on
their platform also repelled him, and were dis-
pleasing to his kindly heart. He believed that
it was possible to hate slavery without hating
every slaveholder, and to abolish it without abol-
ishing the Union ; and he defined precisely his
position, in a letter written on July 31, 1860, in
reply to an invitation from Mr. Garrison to at-
tend a meeting the next day to celebrate the
anniversary of British emancipation in the West
Indies.
" It is due," he wrote, " to a perfectly frank
understanding, that I should say, what I believe
you already know, that though I am with you
22 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
and your friends in sympathy when you rejoice
that the British slave is now a freeman, yet I
have been so often pained at the unremitting and,
I think, frequently unjust assaults by persons
upon your platform on men whom I greatly re-
spect, and whose services in the cause of rational
and impartial liberty I highly prize, that I could
not fail to esteem myself an intruder in your
midst, unless I should suppress something I
might feel urged to say. My fidelity to the
existing institution of government, its charters,
its organization, and the duties of its citizenship,
is, ever has been, and, I doubt not, will always
be, unshaken ; but, working in the sphere of cit-
izenship, and through the instrumentality it af-
fords, I hope that I ever may remember the
lesson of British emancipation, and apply it
wherever I have the right and the power."
It has been mentioned that when in mature
life he was called to be Governor, he was already
a well-trained political philosopher. Whether
he would be as efficient in practice as he had
been studious of theory was unknown. The
condition of his private fortune had debarred him
from the practical political training which in this
country almost always precedes elevation to the
highest offices, and had required his uninter-
rupted devotion to a profession which always
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 23
demands constancy as a condition of success.
Never but once had he held political office, and
then only for the session of 1859, as a member
of the lower house of the Legislature, although,
to be sure, he became the leader of that house,
seizing the position in debate upon the question
of an address for the removal of Edward G.
Lpring from the office of Judge of Probate for
Suffolk County, which Mr. Loring held in viola-
tion of a statute of the Commonwealth render-
ing it incompatible with the office of United
States' Commissioner, in which capacity Mr.
Loring shortly before had acted in surrendering
the fugitive slave Burns. At the close of the
session he returned to his profession, declining
an appointment to the bench of the Superior
Court which was offered to him by Governor
Banks, and refusing also to permit his name to
be submitted to the convention of his party as
a candidate for nomination for Governor. But,
in 1860, notwithstanding this abstinence from of-
ficial life, he was nominated for Governor by a
genuine popular impulse which overwhelmed the
old political managers, who regarded him as an
intruder upon the arena, and had laid other
plans.
His avowed sympathy with John Brown en-
tered largely into the campaign ; particularly an
24 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
expression which he had used in taking the chair
as presiding officer of a meeting for the relief of
John Brown's family, on November 18, 1859,
when (after reading to the audience a letter from
Captain Brown to Lydia Maria Child telling what
women and children would be left dependent on
others by his death) he said : —
" I pause not now to consider, because it is
wholly outside of the duty or the thought of this
assembly to-night, whether the enterprise of John
Brown and his associates in Virginia was wise
or foolish, right or wrong; I only know that
whether the enterprise itself was one or the
other, John Brown himself is right. I sympa-
thize with the man ; I sympathize with the idea ;
because I sympathize with and believe in the
Eternal Right. They who are dependent upon
him and his sons and his associates in the battle
at Harper's Ferry, have a right to call upon us
who have professed to believe, or who have in
any manner or measure taught the doctrine of
the rights of man as applied to the colored slaves
of the South, to stand by them in their bereave-
ment, whether those husbands and fathers and
brothers were right or wrong."
Timorous politicians from his own State and
from others appealed to him in vain to retract,
or at least to qualify these words. But he
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 25
would never take back or explain away one
syllable.
He had resolved, early in 1860, to devote him-
self to the national campaign, and in May was
Chairman of the Massachusetts delegation in
the Republican Convention at Chicago, where
after the final ballot, he was selected to second
the motion of Mr. Evarts that the nomination
of Mr. Lincoln for President should be made
unanimous. When in August he was himself
nominated for Governor, he did not throw up the
engagements he had made for speaking, but con-
tinued to canvass the State in person to the very
day of the election, when he was chosen by a
popular vote larger than had been received by
any of his predecessors.
In his inaugural address he recommended that
some considerable portion of the dormant militia
should be placed on a footing of activity, in order
that " in the possible contingencies of the future
the State might be ready without inconvenient
delay to contribute her share of force in any
exigency of public danger ; " and he took a
broader and deeper view than was common in
those days of the magnitude of the impending
crisis, holding that in its issue was involved more
than the Union itself, — the very existence on
the face of the earth of democratic republi-
26 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
can government organized under constitutional
forms.
" Upon this issue," he exclaimed, " over the
heads of all mere politicians and partisans, in
behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
I appeal directly to the warm hearts and clear
heads of the great masses of the people. The
men who own and till the soil, who drive the
mills, and hammer out their own iron and leather
on their own anvils and lapstones, and they who,
whether in the city or the country, reap the
rewards of enterprising industry and skill in the
varied pursuits of business, are honest, intelli-
gent, patriotic, independent, and brave. They
know that simple defeat in an election is no cause
for the disruption of a government. They know
that those who declare that they will not live
peaceably within the Union do not mean to live
peaceably out of it. They know that the people
of all sections have a right which they mean to
maintain, of free access from the interior to both
oceans, and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico,
and of the free use of all the lakes and rivers
and highways of commerce, North, South, East,
or West. They know that the Union means
Peace, and unfettered commercial intercourse
from sea to sea and from shore to shore ; that it
secures us all against the unfriendly presence or
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 27
possible dictation of any foreign power, and com-
mands respect for our flag and security for our
trade. And they do not intend, nor will they
ever consent, to be excluded from these rights
which they have so long enjoyed, or to abandon
the prospect of the benefits which Humanity
claims for itself by means of their continued en-
joyment in the future."
fe
28 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
CHAPTER IH.
Massachusetts Militia prepared for service. — Cooperation of other
New England Governors invited. — Confidential understanding
established with General Scott. — Troops held in readiness to be
sent to Washington at counting of electoral vote for President. —
The Governor's confidants at Washington. — The beginning of the
War. — March of the Massachusetts Militia to Washington. —
General review of the services of the Governor to the country
during the war. — His counsel of sympathy with the Federal
Government. — His unofficial advisers. — Vice President Hamlin
summoned to Boston. — Union of all classes in Massachusetts in
support of the war, under the Governor's leadership. — Mr.
Evarts's description of his leadership. — Speech of Fletcher
Webster on Bunker Hill. — Departure of the Twelfth Regiment.
There was a furious snow-storm on January
5, 1861, the day of his inauguration. Without
waiting for it to abate, his first official act, im-
mediately after the inaugural ceremonies, was to
despatch a confidential messenger to the Gov-
ernors of New Hampshire and Maine, to acquaint
them with his determination to prepare the active
militia of Massachusetts for instant service, and
to invite their cooperation. Then followed, week
by week, in the face of ridicule from many
sources, and bitter opposition from many more,
that series of military orders and those purchases
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 29
of war material to which the whole country
now looks back as evidences of unequaled fore-
sight.
In the light of subsequent events his action in
preparing Massachusetts for the war stands so
fully justified that many have forgotten that it
was opposed at all. But the records of the press
and public assemblages and legislative proceed-
ings during those trying weeks, bear witness that
there was a large portion, even of the Governor's
own political party, whose denunciation of it was
exceeded only by their scoffing. Nothing, how-
ever, disturbed his steady purpose. The people
to-day know how the troops were warned for
duty by general orders issued in January, and
soon afterwards contracts were made for the over-
coats and other articles of equipment ; but they
do not know yet the extent of his efforts, — how
he urged that our militia should be summoned to
garrison Washington at the time of the counting
of the electoral votes for President and Vice
President, in February ; how a confidential un-
derstanding was established between him and
General Scott, which served more perhaps than
any one other thing, to inspire the veteran com-
mander with confidence that the country's cause
was not hopeless ; how, in consultation with Gen-
eral Scott, written memoranda for the direction
30 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
of our troops on the march to Washington were
drawn up, by which it was provided, in anticipa-
tion of obstruction of their route overland, that
they should proceed by sea and be disembarked
either under cover of the guns of Fort McIIenry
at Baltimore, or else at Annapolis ; and how
steamers were kept for weeks in readiness at his
bidding to transport them to the Chesapeake.
Besides General Scott, the persons at Wash-
ington who in those anxious days were intrusted
with the Governor's confidence, were especially
Charles Francis Adams and Montgomery Blair,
and, to a certain extent, Edwin M. Stanton, who
was then the Attorney General of President
Buchanan. Referring to these offers of the Mas-
sachusetts troops, the latter, in a correspondence
with ex-Governor Clifford (never yet published),
wrote from Washington on February 11, 1861 :
" The determined and vigilant disposition to sup-
port the Government with requisite volunteer
forces has produced here a beneficial effect and
contributed to the anxiety of the revolutionists
for concealing their designs."
At last the signal-gun of the Rebellion was
fired. Patient in the extreme through all the
attempts to prevent war, sympathizing and cor-
responding with Mr. Adams during all the efforts
and proffers to the South which were made in
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 31
the faint hope to avert it, yet when it came Gov-
ernor Andrew welcomed it as the sure solution
of all difficulties. In his own memorable words
spoken in the address with which he opened the
session of the General Court which was speedily
called, " a grand era had dawned," and he " per-
ceived nothing now about us which ought to
discourage the good or to alarm the brave."
" Senators and Representatives," said he, " grave
responsibilities have fallen, in the providence of
God, upon the government and people, — and
they are welcome. They could not have been
safely postponed. They have not arrived too
soon. They will sift and try this people, all who
lead and all who follow."
Never was a finer illustration of the couplet
of the poet, that
" When once their slumbering passions burn,
The peaceful are the strong."
This man, of sympathies nurtured on the most
advanced ideas of his age, yearning, hoping, pray-
ing for a peaceful end of all wrong, yet possessed
a foresight so intuitive and a mind so practical,
that he had calmly prepared for war, unmoved
by the ridicule and abuse of men of coarser fibre ;
and when war came, accepted it so solemnly and
earnestly that there seemed and there was no
inconsistency between his principle and his prac-
32 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
tice. " Devoted in heart to the interests of peace,"
said he in that same great address, " painfully
alive to the calamities and sorrows of war, yet I
cannot fail to see how plainly the rights and
liberties of a people repose upon their own capac-
ity to maintain them."
In an address delivered on June 17, 1865, on
the occasion of dedicating the monument at Lowell
to Ladd and Whitney, two of the men of the
Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, who fell at Balti-
more on the 19th of April, 1861, the Governor
recurred to those early days of the war in words
Worthy of what he was describing : —
^" It is not for me," he said, " to attempt to
separate the bewildering masses of transactions
and emotions through which we have lived, or
to rise above the influence of those recent events
which, at present, control alike the imagination
and the reason. But I may testify to the im-
pressions stamped forever on our memories and
our hearts by that great week in April, when
Massachusetts rose up at the sound of the can-
nonade of Sumter, and her militia brigade spring-
ing to their arms appeared on Boston Common.
It redeemed the meanness and the weariness of
many a prosaic life. It w r as a revelation of a
profound sentiment, of manly faith, of glorious
fidelity, and of a love stronger than death. Those
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 33
were days of which none other in the history of
the war became the parallel. And when, on the
* evening of the anniversary of the battle of Lex-
ington, there came the news along the wires that
the Sixth Regiment had been cutting its way
through the streets of Baltimore, whose pave-
ments were reddened with the blood of Mid-
dlesex, it seemed as if there descended into our
hearts a mysterious strength and into our minds
a supernal illumination. In many trying experi-
ences of the war we have watched, by starlight
as well as sunlight, the doubtful fortunes of our
arms. But never has the news of victory, de-
cisive and grand, — not even that of Gettysburg,
on which hung issues more tremendous than ever
depended on the fortunes of a single battle-field,
— so lifted us above ourselves, so transformed
our earthly weakness into heavenly might by a
glorious transfiguration. The citizens of yester-
day were to-day the heroes whom history would
never forget ; and the fallen brave had put on
the crown of martyrdom, more worthy than a
hundred mortal diadems. Their blood alone was
precious enough to wipe out the long arrears of
shame. The great and necessary struggle was
begun> without which we were a disgraced, a
doomed, a ruined people. We had reached the
parting of the ways ; and we had not hesitated
34 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
to choose the right one. Oh ! it is terrible, be-
yond expression terrible, to feel that only war,
with all its griefs and pains and crimes, will save
a people ; but how infinitely greater than the
dread and the dismay with which we thought of
war, was the hope of that salvation ! "
It is not within the province of this sketch to
narrate the details of Governor Andrew's ad-
ministration. That duty is reserved for the bi-
ographer and the historian. It is enough here
to recall to memory how until after the Procla-
mation of Emancipation fixed the policy of the
Federal Government, the war in behalf of the
Union was rather a war of the States than of
the Central Pow r er; and how, during the long
and difficult interval, when every governor was
a war-minister, he was the greatest of them all,
clearest in foresight, most sagacious in counsel,
most resolute in will, most untiring in action, un-
discouraged himself by the faltering course of the
Administration at Washington, lending it the aid
of the financial credit of Massachusetts when its
treasury was empty, raising and maintaining
under arms troops for its service when it declared
that it had "more men than were wanted," set-
ting regiment after regiment in the field without
calling on it for a single article of equipment,
and, above all, encouraging it to appeal for its
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 35
defense to the broad duty of allegiance owed by
all its subjects.
Without the energy, patience, and determina-
tion of all the loyal governors, but especially of
Governor Andrew in the East and Governor
Morton of Indiana in the West, where to-day
would have been the Union ? The Central Gov-
ernment, its credit impaired, its arsenals empty,
its fleets dispersed on remote seas, its counsels
timorous and indecisive, was powerless alone to
save it. Realizing all this, Governor Andrew, in
his address to the Legislature on May 14, 1861,
enjoined as the highest public duty the cultivation
of a spirit of patience with the Federal Adminis-
tration.
"In this grave national experience," he de-
clared, "it becomes us not only to acquit our-
selves as men, by courage and enterprise, but
also to remember that every virtue, civil as well
as military, calls on us with more commanding
voice. Patient endurance, unflinching persever-
ance in every duty, whether of action or passion,
at such a moment become grand and heroic.
Nor can I urge too strongly the duty of faithful
and filial union of heart with those to whom are
committed the responsibilities of the central
power. Whether they who have to guide the
current of national action seem fast or slow, nar-
36 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
row or broad, I trust that Massachusetts men will,
with equal devotedness, enact their part in this
warfare as good soldiers of a great cause."
The men not holding official connection with
his administration, whom chiefly he took into his
confidence for counsel in these times, represented
no one class of interests. Among the merchants
they were John M. Forbes and Francis B.
Crowninshield ; at the bar, Peleg W. Chandler
and Horace Gray, jr. ; from the bench, Judges
Charles Allen and E. Rockwood Hoar ; among
men in political life, ex-Governor Boutwell * and
Thomas D. Eliot. Four of these, Judge Allen
and ex-Governor Boutwell, and Messrs. Forbes
and Crowninshield, he had appointed members
of the " Peace Congress " which met at Wash-
ington in February at the request of the State
of Virginia, and in which he completed the Mas-
sachusetts delegation of seven by adding Theoph-
* On consultation with ex-Governor Boutwell, on April 20, 1861,
when communication was cut off between the North and Washing-
ton, and it was uncertain what might befall the President, Mr.
Hamlin, the Vice President, was invited from his home in Maine
to Boston by Governor Andrew, in order that if Washington, with
the President, should fall into the hands of the rebels, the Federal
Government might be immediately reorganized under the Vice
President. Upon the arrival of Mr. Hamlin at Boston a consulta-
tion took place between him and the Governor, and it was agreed
that it would be best that any such organization, if necessary,
should be effected at New York, whither he then proceeded.
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 37
ilus P. Chandler (the brother of Peleg W.
Chandler), Richard P. Waters, and Mr. Good-
rich, the Lieutenant Governor.
But the enthusiasm with which he inspired the
people at a time when the hearty cooperation of
all classes was essential to the honor of the State
and the salvation of the Nation, was all his own.
On the very first day of open hostilities, when
it was seen how the preparations which he had
been steadily pursuing in the face of ridicule and
denunciation, were justified by the event, distrust
vanished utterly. From that day forward, dur-
ing his whole official term, he enjoyed the con-
fidence of men of every class of society, pursuit
in life, and shade of political opinion, to an extent
more nearly universal than the history of the
State records was ever reposed in another of its
citizens ; and it was a confidence not conceded
but commanded. The people recognized a nat-
ural leader. Mr. William M. Evarts has said
truly : " Without adulation and without extrav-
agance, we may say, looking at the actual career
of Governor Andrew and at the public course of
Massachusetts under his lead, that what Massa-
chusetts did and what Massachusetts was during
the years of our war, was a part of the fame of
Governor Andrew, for he was the leading spirit,
he -was the preparing influence, his was the con-
38 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
trolling mind, and his the unfailing energy,
though it needed, of course, the great power
and resources of the State for its manifestation."
" And, besides his direct authority in his own
State, who can measure the influence which he
exerted over the colder natures or the duller in-
telligences of the public men of other States
with whom he was brought in contact?"
Men who had been political antagonists during
a whole generation suspended, if they did not
forget, their strife in answering his call. On the
17th of June, 1861, standing on Bunker Hill, he
unfurled the flag of the Union on the monument
(from the summit of whrch it was then for the
first time displayed) ; and, standing by his side,
the son of Daniel Webster spoke words which
redeemed many an error of former years. " I
renew," he said, " on this national altar vows not
for the first time made, of devotion to my coun-
try, its Constitution and Union. I feel the inspi-
ration which breathes around this spot. I feel
the awful presence of the great dead who speak
to us out of this hallowed ground. They call to
us with more impressive than human voices to
show ourselves not unworthy sons. From this
spot I take my departure, like the mariner com-
mencing his voyage, and wherever my eyes may
close they will be turned hitherward — towards
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 39
this North." One month later Colonel Web-
ster led his regiment from Massachusetts to Vir-
ginia, to fall on the field of Manassas on August
30, 1862 ; and as it marched down State Street
in departing, the column joined in the chorus of
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
But his soul is marching on ! "
No voice was raised that day to challenge the
declaration that " John Brown himself was
right."
40 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
CHAPTER IV.
•angement and furniture of Executive rooms at the State House.
— Freedom of access of people to the Governor. — His catholic re-
lation to all men. — Sir Frederick Bruce finds him surrounded by
colored people. — His habits of business. — Not an inch of red
tape. — His daily receptions. — His informal manner. — The
knapsack man. — Testimony of Mr. Hillard to the purity of his
life. — Testimony of Mr. Dana to his incorruptibility and human-
ity. — His power of endurance. — Neglect of private affairs. —
His love for children. — A visit to the White House at night. —
Rigid exaction of responsibility and work from others. — The
neglected pardon. — Care of penal institutions. — His relations
with the Executive Council.
The arrangement of the private executive
rooms at the State House was unchanged during
the whole of the Governor's administration. It
was faulty in many respects, and a few simple
changes in it, enabling him to seclude himself,
would have saved him from much care and an-
noyance. They were on the same floor with
the Council Chamber, and were reached through
a long and narrow corridor which led into an
antechamber. Out of this the Governor's apart-
ment opened directly, with no intervening room.
It was a low-studded chamber, perhaps twenty-
five feet square, lighted by two windows opening
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 41
westward. In the centre was a massive square
table, on the side of which, facing the door of the
antechamber, the Governor had his seat. Directly
opposite him, at the same table, sat his secretary.
At a desk near one of the windows was the place
of an assistant secretary. The chairs and sofa
were very plain and covered with green plush.
The large book-cases along the northern wall,
empty at the beginning of his administration, be-
came filled before the end of it with more than
two hundred volumes of the correspondence con-
ducted under his immediate direction. A large
mirror, with a heavily carved black-walnut frame,
surmounted the mantel, gas-fixtures projecting
from among the carving ; and on these, during
the first year of the war, while Massachusetts
was arming and equipping her own troops, he
was accustomed to hang specimens of shoddy
clothing or defective accoutrements, labelled with
the names of the faithless contractors, thus pub-
licly exposed to the indignation of the hundreds
of visitors who frequented the room. His only
means of seclusion was to retreat into a room
beyond the antechamber, from which there was
no other outlet than the door of entrance, which
was of solid iron. Every frequenter of the State
House may remember seeing him, after being
pestered beyond endurance, hasten across the
42 SKETCH OF TEE OFFICIAL LIFE
antechamber into this room, where he would bolt
and bar out the waiting crowd until he could
finish some urgent work demanding freedom from
the interruptions to which he was subject in his
own apartment. Once behind that iron door he
was free ; and it was the only place in the whole
building where he was secure from intrusion.
His patience, however, under all manners of
interruption, was marvelous. Now and then it
would give way in little acts of nervousness, such
as pulling unconsciously at a bell-rope which
hung over his table, or insisting on the immediate
attendance of an old and favorite clerk from the
Adjutant-General's office who had been dead a
year or more. By some curious psychological
process, when the Governor had been especially
vexed at anything which went wrong in that
office, he more than once forgot the old gentle-
man's death, and sent down stairs for him.
He was accessible always to all kinds and con-
ditions of people, and in the freedom of his inter-
course with them he fully exemplified and might
well have adopted the words with which De
Quincey, in his " Confessions," introduces the
story of the friendless girl of the London streets :
" The truth is, that at no time of my life have
I been a person to hold myself polluted by the
touch or approach of any person who wore a
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 43
human shape ; on the contrary, from my very
earliest youth, it has been my pride to converse
freely, more Socratico, with all human beings,
man, woman, and child, that chance might fling
in my way, — a practice which is friendly to the
knowledge of human nature, to good feelings,
and to that frankness of address which becomes
a man who would be thought a philosopher, for
a philosopher should not see with the eyes of the
poor limitary creature calling himself a man of
the world and filled with narrow and self-regard-
ing prejudices of birth and education, but should
look upon himself as a catholic creature, and as
standing in an equal relation to high and low, to
educated and uneducated, to the guilty and in-
nocent."
Countless anecdotes might be repeated illus-
trating this trait of his character, but there is
room here only for one, which was aptly told by
Mr. Edwin P. Whipple in his eulogy before the
city government of Boston : —
" Sir Frederick Bruce, the British Minister,
once called upon the Governor at the State
House and found the room nearly filled with col-
ored women who had come to him to obtain news
of fathers, brothers and sons enlisted in the black
regiments of Massachusetts. Sir Frederick
waited, while the Governor, with kindly patience,
44 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
listened to complaints, answered questions, gave
advice, and tried to infuse consolation and cheer
into the hearts of his humble friends. After these
interviews were all over the turn of the British
minister came, and he was a man with the nobil-
ity of soul to appreciate what he had witnessed.
Clasping the Governor by the hand, he declared
that, whatever might be the advantages of a
republican government, he had never believed
that it could assume a paternal character, but
what he had just seen proved how much he had
been mistaken."
His habits of business lacked system, in part
through inexperience of official life, but more
through eagerness to dispose at once of the mat-
ters uppermost. He never acquiesced patiently
in any routine. Writing to President Lincoln
on May 3, 1861, he said : " On receiving your
proclamation [calling for troops] we took up the
war and have carried on our part of it in the
spirit in which, we believe, the Administration
and the American people intend to act ; namely,
as if there was not an inch of red tape in the
world."
So fer, however, as he may be said to have
had a daily routine, it was his custom to devote
the early hours of the morning, first to his mail ;
then to reports from the departments of the State
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 45
government, and interviews with officials of those
departments and with officers of the United
States having business with him ; then to inter-
views with officers from the field or engaged in
recruiting or organizing troops at home ; and
finally, at some time between noon and one
o'clock, to throw open the doors of his room to
the public. By that hour a great crowd had
assembled in the antechamber, eager for admit-
tance. Except the similar though rarer public
receptions by President Lincoln, there were no
scenes in which it was possible to witness more
of the effect of the war on all classes of society
than in those daily inroads. Instantly the room
would be filled with the crowd. Then, with that
patience which almost never failed, he would
hear and examine personally into every case, or
give the applicant in charge to his staff-officers
to make the examination under his own super-
vision, and would do all that could be done to
relieve suffering or anxiety, stimulate patriotism
or reward merit.
He had not that smooth way of refusing with-
out seeming to refuse, in which his predecessor
so excelled. It was often to be wished, for his
own comfort, that he could develop ever so small
a degree of that official manner which checks
and repels intrusion ; but he never did. There
46 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
was not, in his nature, the germ of formalism.
One day, among the many exhibitors of military
notions who beset him, was a man with a patent
knapsack. There were many visitors in attend-
ance, some of high distinction, awaiting audience ;
but the knapsack man was before them in obtain-
ing his ear. He listened to his description of the
article ; and when he was told that some of our
Massachusetts troops wished it as a substitute for
the regulation knapsack, he forgot the presence
of everybody, asked for it to be packed and
buckled over his own shoulders, and then marched
up and down the room, testing himself its as-
serted merits, before he would turn to any other
business.
In those daily receptions, women anxious for
the safety or health of fathers, sons, brothers,
husbands, in the armies before Richmond or
Vicksburg, or in the rebel prisons, or having
grievances to present as to the administration of
" State aid " to their families ; soldiers complain-
ing of injustice or of suffering in the field or at
home ; selectmen and recruiting committees sug-
gesting plans or asking favors to promote enlist-
ments ; an endless host of applicants for appoint-
ments, military and civil ; citizens of every class
seeking indorsement and aid of schemes for sani-
tary and other charities ; petitioners for pardon
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 47
of criminals, for admission of deaf and dumb or
blind or idiotic children as public beneficiaries to
the charitable institutions of the State, — these,
and a countless multitude of others, on every
conceivable variety of business, all found a willing
ear and an attention justly proportioned to their
affairs, whether serious or trivial. To all these
various wants and needs never was a heart more
sensitive, never a disposition more paternal ; and
this recalls the testimony borne by Mr. George
S. Hillard, his political opponent, but, his life-
long friend, when (at the same bar meeting at
which Mr. Chandler gave the description of the
Governor's college life, already quoted), after
first declaring his belief that the loss of Governor
Andrew was a greater loss to Massachusetts than
that of any citizen either in the early or the later
history of the State, he said that, " in conclusion,
he wished to make another remark, which might
seem as extraordinary as that with which he
opened his address, but which he believed sin-
cerely was truth ; and that was that he never
knew a man whose daily life and conversation
embodied the teachings of the Saviour as laid
down in Holy Writ more than his. He never
knew a man who left this world with less of the
stain of sin than he."
And Mr. Richard H. Dana Jr., who preceded
48 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
Mr. Hillard on the same occasion, after styling
Governor Andrew " a great magistrate and an
incorruptible man," continued, —
" I do not say incorruptible in that low and
mean sense of being above pecuniary temptation :
I should feel it derogatory to him even to allude
to such an exemption ; although, as times go,
there are cases in which it is no small praise. I
mean to say that he could not be deflected from
the course of duty by any of the temptations
which address themselves to the weaknesses of
public men. His morality was not a graft of later
years upon an ordinary stock ; it was not sweet
water gathered into a vase, nor the accumula-
tions of a large reservoir ; but it was a fountain
of living water, springing up from the depths of
his nature. The foundations of his character were
laid deep and strong.
" In the older civilizations and religions there
were scattered instances of humane men who
recognized more or less the obligations or the
claims of man, as such, upon his fellow-men ; but
they ended as they began, with closet reflections
or sublime sentiments for the reading of the few ;
there never was a religion until Christianity, that
even professed a recognition of the great . truth
to which Christianity commands the obedience
of all ; that is, the truth of the unity of mankind,
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 49
the substantial equality in kind of every human
being, children of one Maker, who will not allow
the weakest and the meanest of them to be neg-
lected. Mr. Andrew felt to the utmost this
Christian obligation, and fulfilled it with enthu-
siasm. No cry struck his ear in which he could
recognize even the articulate sound which is the
proof of humanity, that he did not listen to. Let
a cry for justice come even from the debased or
the wicked, he was ready to examine, and if right
to assert. A plea for a right, though it came
from those who had all their lives done nothing
but wrong, had its distinct claim upon him as a
citizen and a man. His sympathies were quick
and sincere, but it is no uncommon thing for
mere sensibility to weep over pain and distress,
and even to relieve it ; this he would do, but his
large mind and thoughtful habits led him to ad-
dress himself to the causes of vice, and suffering,
and wrong. He was not satisfied with relieving
the sufferer or the oppressed ; he addressed him-
self to attack the causes of oppression and suffer-
ing.
" I have used the word incorruptible in its
highest sense, but we have not exhausted it. He
appreciated office and station as opportunities for
the exercise of powers which he felt that he pos-
sessed for the good of mankind, and he loved to
50 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
be in the march of great events, as an incitement
to virtuous activity. But he would not accept
any post for the exercise of power, whatever its
opportunities for doing good, upon any terms
whatever that might restrict or qualify his moral
power. He had absolute faith in the moral gov-
ernment of a Supreme Being, for whose power
nothing was too great, and for whose supervision
nothing was too minute. He knew that however
a man may be helmed and shielded and harnessed
by skill and art, there was always a spear of truth
which could pierce through the joints of the har-
ness, and inflict a wound past all surgery. He
felt that he could not exercise his intellectual
powers except in a clear moral atmosphere ; and
in such an atmosphere, though he was neither
vain nor rash, he was ready, aye, ready for the
encounter ; for he had absolute faith * Whatever
might be the appearance of weakness around
him, and however slight might be his visible
support, he knew that the very winds blew and
waters rolled strength to the brave, and power
and victory."
In spite of the harassing character of cares like
those which have been described, on a nature so
sympathetic as was that of Governor Andrew,
his power of endurance was extraordinary. Al-
most invariably he was at the State House as
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 51
early or even earlier than either of his secretaries,
and his appearance was always the signal for
fresh work in every department of the building.
Paying hasty calls at the offices of the Adjutant-
General and the Surgeon-General, on his way,
nine o'clock rarely found him absent from his
own desk ; and there he continued always until
sunset, and often until long past midnight, unless
some public duty called him elsewhere.
His private affairs went utterly neglected. His
family he rarely saw by daylight, except in the
early morning and on Sundays, and to a man of
so affectionate a disposition this was the greatest
sacrifice. Even on Sundays there was often no
respite of work. Sometimes, however, his chil-
dren would come to his crowded room at the
State House, and linger there for an hour in the
early afternoon on their way home from school.
No matter how urgent his business, there was
always a moment to spare for an affectionate word
or a caress, and an encouragement to make a
play-room of the chamber.
James Freeman Clarke relates a characteris-
tic anecdote which belongs in this connection.
He says : " A pleasant picture comes up in my
mind of an evening in Washington at the end
of 1861. Brother Andrew took me with him to
the White House to see President Lincoln. It
52 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
was about ten o'clock, but the porter said that
the President had gone out with Mr. Seward;
but, recognizing Governor Andrew, he added,
' Walk in, Governor, walk in.' So Brother
Andrew went in, and looked through all the
rooms of the lower floor. All were lighted, and
all empty. Then he went up-stairs, and I fol-
lowed. We came to a door before which stood
two pairs of little shoes. ' This is the children's
room,' said he ; ' I should like to go in and see
them asleep.' He put his hand on the handle
of the door, as if to open it, and then, changing
his mind, turned away. But the impulse was
such a natural one ! In the palace of the nation,
in the midst of the great rebellion, the image of
these little children quietly asleep took his heart
for the moment away from all the great affairs
of the State and Nation."
During the first few months of the war his
labor at the State House averaged more than
twelve hours daily, and during April and May,
1861, the gray light of morning often mingled
with the gaslight over his table, before he aban-
doned work, discharged his weary attendants,
and walked down the hill to his little house in
Charles Street to snatch a few hours of sleep be-
fore beginning the task of another day. It must
have been an iron constitution as well as an iron
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 53
will which sustained these irregularities with
constantly renewing vigor. After his invariable
bath and hasty breakfast he would reappear at
the State House as fresh as the morning itself,
without a trace perceptible to the casual visitor
of irritation or fatigue, while perhaps half an
hour later his attendants of the previous night
would come to their places cross and jaded. Mr.
Clarke says well : " He worked like the great
engine in the heart of the steamship. The ves-
sel may be rolling and pitching amidst frightful
seas, her decks swept by successive waves, but
there, in the centre of the ship, the engine works
steadily on with tranquil accuracy but enormous
power. Such force, so steadily exercised, was
his. There was no jar, no strain, no hurry, no
repose ; but constant equable motion, on and on,
through all those weary years, to their tri-
umphant end."
Unsparing to himself, he did not spare others ;
filled himself with a sustaining enthusiasm, he ex-
pected and demanded from others efforts corres-
ponding in proportion to their ability. His sec-
retary once recommended to him an increase of
the pay of a subordinate. The letter bears the
indorsement instantly made : " I cordially assent,
but on condition that he shall come at nine
o'clock, a. m." This was in the case of an officer
54 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
whose residence was out of the city, and whose
duties kept him at the State House almost al-
ways until sunset and often until midnight. It
was an indorsement not unkind, — never from
all those years can any of his associates or subor-
dinates recall a single act or word of unkindness
done or spoken by Governor Andrew, — but it
was characteristic of his habit to hold every one
strictly to the full measure of duty. So was his
indignation, one dreary afternoon, the day before
Christmas, at finding that the office of the Sec-
retary of the Commonwealth was closed half an
hour earlier than usual. There was a severe
snow-storm raging, which suspended business
through the city, and the clerks of that office had
closed it, forgetting that there should have been
drawn and forwarded up-stairs during the day,
for the Governor's signature, a pardon which
had been granted to a convict in the State Pris-
on, according to a custom which prevailed with
him to grant one pardon, upon the recommenda-
tion of the Warden, every Christmas morning.
It irritated him that the clerks below should
have forgotten such a duty. During his own
hard work through the day, the thought of the
happiness which the morrow would bring to that
convict had lightened his heart, and he felt a
positive pain that others should not have shared
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 55
that feeling. Though unwell, he hastily broke
out of the room, walked through the driving
snow across the city to the house of one of the
officers of the State Department, brought him
back to the State House, stood by him while the
pardon was drawn and the Great Seal of the
Commonwealth was affixed to it, signed it, and
then despatched it by one of his secretaries to
the Warden at Charlestown.
The preliminary investigation of applications
for pardon he seldom delegated to others, even
at the height of his military labor. By the Con-
stitution of the State, the assent of the Council
was necessary to confirm every pardon proposed
by the Governor, and there was a regular com-
mittee for formal investigation of pardon cases ;
but he did not often decide to refer any partic-
ular application to that committee, until after
some preliminary investigation himself, frequently
involving no little toil. During his term of office
there was hardly a place of confinement of crim-
inals in the whole Commonwealth, from Nan-
tucket to Berkshire, which he did not personally
visit. He believed that care of our penal insti-
tutions was next in importance for the welfare of
the State, to the care of the schools.
The legal obligation to consult the Council,
not only with regard to all matters of pardon, but
56 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
with regard also to almost all matters whatsoever
of administration, whether of finance or appoint-
ment, was a great drain upon his patience. But
there were certain advantages in it which he was
quick to appreciate. Chiefly, it methodized in
his own mind the reasons for his acts. The
necessity oftentimes of expressing reasons to the
Council, and the liability at all times to be called
on to express them, compelled him to avoid alto-
gether that vagueness of thought which accom-
panies the actions of most men. Almost daily,
during the war, there was a session of the Coun-
cil at which he was obliged to attend for one,
two, or three hours. Usually it began in the
early afternoon, after the close of his public re-
ception.
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 57
CHAPTER V.
The Governor's habits of diet. — Liking of tea. — His opposition
to a Prohibitory Liquor Law. — Extracts from his argument. —
He abstains from presenting the subject to the Legislature while
Governor, lest he should divide the people from support of the
war. — His message to the Legislature on the morality of sale
of liquors as a beverage. — Union in sustaining the War para-
mount to all other issues. — He combats Western hostility to
New England. — His theory of the destiny of New England in
event of success of the Rebellion. — His views of the relations
of the British Provinces to New England.
Before leaving his own apartment for the
Council Chamber the Governor was accustomed
to retreat from visitors into a little intermediate
room, where he partook of a simple lunch, gen-
erally of only bread and cheese with a cup of
tea. Dr. Johnson was not a more devoted lover
of tea. He held to the theory that it is a pos-
itive nourisher of nervous force, and always was
ready to drink it at any time of day or night.
Simple in all his diet, although, like almost
all busy professional men, a hearty and rapid
eater, he enjoyed and appreciated the pleasures
of the table, for he was a thoroughly developed
man in all the elements of manhood, physical
58 SKETCH OF TEE OFFICIAL LIFE
as well as intellectual and moral. In his great
argument against the principle of a prohibitory
liquor law, made in the winter of 1867 before
a committee of the Legislature, while recit-
ing the causes which combined to increase
the perils of New Englanders from drunken-
ness, besides "a hard climate, v much exposure,
few amusements, a sense of care and responsi-
bility cultivated intensely, and the prevalence of
ascetic and gloomy theories of life, duty, and
Providence," he enumerates also " the absence
of light, cheering beverages, little variety in
food, and great want of culinary skill." He
was fond of wine and used it freely, but always
with temperance ; and he despised, from the bot-
tom of his heart, the prevailing hypocrisy as to
its use. No one respected more the discretion of
the individual who should abstain from it, either
for fear of being tempted beyond self-control, or
for example to others in danger ; but he de-
manded equal respect for his own discretion.
Believing that law has of itself no reforming
power, that it may punish and terrify but cannot
convert, he attacked the doctrine of prohibitory
legislation at its root.
"It is," he argued, "only in the strife and
actual controversy of life — natural, human, and
free — that robust virtue can be attained, or pos-
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 59
itive good accomplished. It is only in similar
freedom alike from bondage and pupilage, alike
from the prohibitions of artificial legislation on
the one hand, and superstitious fears on the other,
that nations or peoples can become thrifty, happy,
and great. Will you venture to adhere to the
effete blunders of antiquated despotisms, in the
hope of serving, by legal force, the moral welfare
of your posterity ? Will you insist on the dogma
that, even if certain gifts of nature or science
are not poisons, they are nevertheless so danger-
ously seductive that no virtue can be trusted to
resist them? But when society shall have in-
trusted the keeping of its virtue to the criminal
laws, who will guaranty your success in the ex-
periment, tried by so many nations and ages, re-
sulting always in failure and defeat? Do you
exclaim, that the permitted sale of these bever-
ages, followed as it must be by some use, must
be followed, in turn, by some drunkenness ; and
that drunkenness is not only the parent cause of
nearly all our social woes, but that it is impossible
to maintain against its ravages a successful moral
war ? To both these propositions, moral philos-
ophy, human experience, and history, all com-
mand a respectful dissent.
" Reason, experience, and history all unite to
prove that, while drunkenness lies in near rela-
60 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
tions with poverty and other miseries, and is very
often their proximate cause, it is not true that it
is the parent, or essential cause, without which
they would not have been. And to the teach-
ings of reason, experience, and history, are added
the promises of Gospel Grace, enabling me in all
boldness to confront the fears of those who would
rest the hopes of humanity on the commandments
of men."
" Drunkenness was naturally one of the forms
which vice assumed in New England. So far as
it depended on the mere fact of opportunity for
indulgence, it was partly due to our nearness to
the West Indies, and to the trade by which our
lumber was exchanged for their molasses. The
peculiar product of our distillation was the result
of the lumber trade with the West India Islands,
just as the production of whiskey is now the re-
sult of the superabundant grain crops of the
Western States. A hard climate, much expos-
ure, little variety in food, and great want of culi-
nary skill, few amusements, the absence of light,
cheering beverages, a sense of care and respon-
sibility cultivated intensely, and the prevalence
of ascetic and gloomy theories of life, duty, and
Providence — have, in time past, all combined
to increase the perils of the people from the se-
ductive narcotic. A man whose virtue was weak,
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 61
or whose discouragements were great, or whose
burdens were heavy, or in whom the spirit waged
unequal war with the allurements of the flesh ;
or even one in whom a certain native gayety
strove with the unwelcome exactions of the
elders, was often easily its victim. Independ-
ence, intelligence, self-respect, broader views,
kinder and tenderer sympathies, the cultivation
of the finer tastes, the love and appreciation of
beauty, a truer humanity, — not to speak of
better social theories, — all made more general
and pervading in our society, have gradually,
by divine favor, been made instrumental in the
deliverance of our people from that bondage. I
have not mentioned a greater conscientiousness in
the catalogue of causes, for I do not believe that
conscientiousness has ever been greater than in
New England, or that it is greater now than
it was in other times. It was a characteristic
of New England from the first. It was always
a source of greatness in her people. But it has
been often morbid and even superstitious.
" The evil of drunkenness needed to be met
by a gracious Gospel kindling the heart, not by
a crushing sense of guilt goading the conscience.
The temperance reformation sprang up out of
the heart of a deeply moved humanity. It was
truly and genuinely a Gospel work. It was a
62 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
mission of love and hope. And the power with
which it wrought was the evidence of its inspira-
tion. While it held fast by its original simplicity,
while it pleaded, with the self-forgetfulness of
Gospel discipleship, and sought out with the gen-
erosity of an all-embracing charity, while it
twined itself around the heart-strings and quietly
persuaded the erring, or with an honest boldness
rebuked without anger, — it was strong in the
Lord and in the power of his might, verifying
the prophecy of old, that one might chase a
thousand and two put ten thousand to flight.
But when it passed out of the hands of its
Evangelists and passed into the hands of the
centurions and the hirelings ; when it became a
part of the capital of political speculation, and
went into the jugglery of the caucus ; when
men voted to lay abstinence as a burden on their
neighbors, while they felt no duty of such absti-
nence themselves (even under the laws of their
own creation) ; when the Gospel, the Christian
Church, and the ministers of religion were yoked
to the car of a political triumph ; then it became
the victim of one' of the most ancient and most
dangerous of all the delusions of history."
In all his life, public and private, there was
not a single act which afforded him more internal
satisfaction than this attack. The subject had
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 63
been with him one of earnest thought and clear
conviction for many years ; but for fear of divid-
ing the people on a local question when they
should be united on the great national issues, he
abstained from presenting it to the Legislature
until after the war. The result of the State
election that occurred the week after his death,
completely revolutionizing the policy of Massa-
chusetts on the question, and vindicating his po-
sition, was a proof of the sagacity with which he
foresaw the verdict of the people on a theory of
legislation which only one year before it required
high moral courage even to challenge ; and the
planless action of the Legislature which the rev-
olution brought into power, has proved also how
dependent it was upon his leadership for a suc-
cessful conclusion.
Once only, while he was Governor, did the
Legislature force him to an official intimation of
the opinions which he was so well known to en-
tertain, by passing and presenting for his signa-
ture, in 1865, a resolve " that it is not expedient
or right in principle to authorize the sale of in-
toxicating liquors as a beverage, by license." It
was notorious that the purpose of many who were
concerned in the passage of this resolve, was to
embarrass him. As usual, the straightforward
simplicity with which he met every issue, disap-
64 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
pointed their shallow calculations. Inquiry hav-
ing been made in the Senate as to the Governor's
action upon this resolve, he quietly sent to that
branch of the Legislature a message saying : —
" Since the inquiry has been mooted, I deem it
not only appropriate, but more respectful to the
General Court that I should communicate for its
information the views entertained by me and
which direct my action in the premises. On read-
ing the resolve, it is apparent that the signature
of the Governor would not give to it the force
of law, or change its character, significance, or
value, since the resolve is only the expression of
an opinion on an abstract proposition. Were I
to add my official approval I should be guilty of
the affectation of presuming to the right of ap-
proving or disapproving the opinions on questions
of morality and ethics entertained by gentlemen
whose opinions are, I presume, at least as valu-
able as my own, and which my mere approval or
disapproval could not affect. There are resolves,
such as those which presume to utter the opinions
of the people, our common constituency, on pub-
lic affairs ; or to express their gratitude to public
servants for distinguished merit and exertions for
the common good ; or their condolence with those
who share with all the people the grief of a com-
mon public calamity [referring to the then recent
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 65
death of President Lincoln] ; in which resolves it
seems proper for the Governor to unite officially,
since he also is a representative of the Common-
wealth. But it does not seem to me that with
becoming regard to the entire independence with
which opinions should be entertained, he can
affect to revise the opinions expressed in a resolve
such as the one above recited."
During the war, his determination to unite
Massachusetts in its support was paramount to
every other consideration, and was the key to
many acts which pained some of his friends and
offended others. The deference to certain classes
of society of which he was accused in some of his
appointments, was only one feature of a settled
policy. Many a gallant young officer went down
from Massachusetts into Virginia to battle, an
unconscious hostage for the loyalty of men at
home who in times of disaster might otherwise
easily have fallen into indifference or opposition.
This deep determination was rewarded with suc-
cess. Massachusetts was a unit from the day
when the flag ceased to fly over Sumter to the
day when it crowned again the ruins of the fort.
Divided, we might have perished. United, we
led the van of the war. No one felt the perils
of discord more than he, especially during that
period when there was talk of " leaving New
66 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
England out in the cold." The official records
of those days show how he pleaded and argued
with the West for a more cordial union ; * but
while he had an implicit trust in the issue of the
war as it did result, yet he had too little pride of
opinion, and was too truly a statesman, not to
consider and provide against a different issue. In
event of the success of the Rebellion, he antici-
pated the formation of a northeastern confederacy
which should combine the greater part of New
England with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and
a part of Canada ; and if our present Union had
been doomed to failure, he would not have con-
sidered such a destiny for Massachusetts as hope-
less. In such a confederacy he beheld all the
elements of a first-rate power, — a homogeneous
population of more than five millions, rapidly in-
creasing ; the great harbors of Boston, Portland,
and Halifax, with a capacity to command the
commerce of the Northern Atlantic ; control of
the outlet of the great lakes by possession of the
southern bank of the St. Lawrence; mines of
iron and coal ; forests of timber for every use of
architecture and navigation ; the mechanic arts
* See particularly his printed letter to S. F. Wetmore of Indiana,
February 3, 1863, in reference to the relative contributions of Mas-
sachusetts and Indiana for the war, and to the contributions of
Massachusetts for the development of the Northwest; and his
inaugural address to the Legislature of 1864.
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 67
fully developed ; manufactures in maturity ; and
education, literature, and the fine arts at the
highest point of culture they have attained in
America. But his heart was with the Union as
it is. Never in public letter or speech did he
tolerate the idea of its failure. He had an abid-
ing faith in God's will to preserve it ; and with
him faith always availed more than reason, the
heart more than the intellect. But intellectually
regarding the success of the Rebellion as a possi-
bility, he devoted much attention to the relations
of the British Provinces to New England, a study
to which he was previously attracted, also, by a
conviction that in more intimate bonds of com-
merce with them Boston would find rich sources
of material prosperity. After retiring from office
his interest in the subject even increased. He
was deeply concerned for the success of the rail-
way by which uninterrupted communication will
be effected between Boston and Halifax ; and
during the summer before his death he passed his
vacation in a tour through the Provinces.
68 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
CHAPTER VI.
His antagonism with opponents of emancipation and the use of
colored troops. — Support of Fremont and Hunter in freeing
slaves. — Letter in defense of Hunter. — Speech at Martha's
Vine} T ard. — His influence on the President for Emancipation. —
The Proclamation of September 22, 1862. — The Altoona Con-
vention. — Address of the Governors to the President. — His in-
dependence of partisan influences and considerations. — Opposi-
tion to secret societies. — Jealousy towards him of old party
leaders. — His vetoes. — Official appointments and removals, civil
and military. — The duty of allegiance the solution of the problem
of emancipation. — Correspondence with General McCIellan con-
cerning exclusion of fugitive slaves from our military lines. —
Correspondence with General Butler concerning proper relations
of our military forces to servile insurrection in Maryland in
April, 1861.
Much has been said, since his death, of his
unvarying sweetness of disposition^ which is liable
to give a wrong impression of the man. In a
memoir which he prepared in 1860 of a friend
with whom, he wrote, he had sustained " an in-
timacy of acquaintance such as never existed
between himself and any other man," and whose
influence on his character was continuous for
fourteen years,* he described one quality of his
* The late John W. Browne, of Hingham.
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 69
friend's nature in language which may well be
applied to his own, saying, " He was terribly bold
when truth demanded. And his courage began
at home. He always accused and tried himself
before he denounced any other man. Hence
flowed a sense of freedom, — a self-emancipation,
— which liberated him from the thousand bonds
which hamper men who are constrained by the
necessities of pretense and sham. This also
cleared his mental vision and his perception of
moral distinctions, so that he walked in the green
pastures and beside the still waters of a life
obedient to the precepts of a sincere heart and
a transparent intellect." So Governor Andrew
never allowed himself to be drawn into a quarrel,
and had no personal hatred, even against those
who did him most grievous personal wrong. But
his whole soul was devoted to the grand princi-
ples of civil and political liberty which were at
stake in the war ; and with some men who, he
believed, were obstructing right and justice in
the policy of the government he was in mortal
antagonism. Such hatreds as those he cherished
intensely, and they harmonized with his natural
kindness like shade and light in a fine paint-
ing. No one could be familiar with the steps
toward emancipation, and the use of colored
troops, without being sensible of his strong
70 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
antipathies to certain men who obstructed those
measures.
Over the bodies of our soldiers who were killed
at Baltimore he had recorded a prayer that he
might live to see the end of the war, and a vow
that, so long as he should govern Massachusetts,
and so far as Massachusetts could control the
issue, it should not end without freeing every
slave in America. He believed, at the first, in
the policy of emancipation as a war measure.
Finding that timid counsels controlled the gov-
ernment at Washington, and the then commander
of the Army of the Potomac, so that there was
no light in that quarter, he hailed the action of
Fremont in Missouri in proclaiming freedom to
the western slaves. Through all the reverses
which afterwards befell that officer he never
varied from this friendship ; and when at last
Fremont retired from the Army of Virginia, the
Governor offered him the command of a Massa-
chusetts regiment, and vainly urged him to take
the field again under our State flag. Just so,
afterwards, he welcomed the similar action of
Hunter in South Carolina, and wrote in his de-
fense the famous letter in which he urged " to
fire at the enemy's magazine." * He was deeply
* Premising that this letter, dated May 19, 1862, was written in
reply to a request of the Secretary of War to be advised within what
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 71
disappointed when the Administration disavowed
Hunter's act, for he had hoped much from the
personal friendship which was known to exist
between the General and the President. Soon
followed the great reverses of McClellan before
Richmond.
The feelings of the Governor at this time on
the subject of emancipation are well expressed in
a speech which he made on August 10, 1862, at
the Methodist camp-meeting on Martha's Vine-
yard. It was the same speech in which occurs
his remark, since so often quoted : —
" I know not what record of sin awaits me in
limit of time Massachusetts could furnish a certain number of ad-
ditional regiments, if the Federal Government should call for them,
the passages in it which were especially denounced by those who
at that time opposed the use of colored soldiers and the project of
emancipation, were as follows : —
" If our people feel that they are going into the South to help
fight rebels who will kill and destroy them by all the means known
to savages as well as civilized man ; will deceive them by fraudulent
flags of truce and lying pretenses (as they did the Massachusetts
boys at Williamsburg); will use their negro slaves against them
both as laborers and as fighting men, while they themselves must
never fire at the enemy's magazine, I think they will feel that the
draft is heavy on their patriotism. But, if the President will sustain
General Hunter, recognize all men, even black men, as legally
capable of that loyalty the blacks are waiting to manifest, and let
them fight with God and human nature on their side, the roads will
swarm, if need be, with multitudes whom New England would pour
out to obey your call. Always ready to do my utmost, I remain
most faithfully," etc.
72 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
the other world, but this I know, that I was
never mean enough to despise any man because
he was ignorant, or because he was poor, or be-
cause he was black."
Referring to slavery, he said : —
" I have never believed it to be possible that
this controversy should end, and Peace resume
her sway, until that dreadful iniquity has been
trodden beneath our feet. I believe it cannot,
and I have noticed, my friends (although I am
not superstitious, I believe), that, from the day
our government turned its back on the proclama-
tion of General Hunter, the blessing of God has
been withdrawn from our arms. We were march-
ing on, conquering and to conquer ; post after
post had fallen before our victorious arms ; but
since that day I have seen no such victories.
But I have seen no discouragement. I bate not
one jot of hope. I believe that God rules above,
and that he will rule in the hearts of men, and
that, either with our aid or against it, he has
determined to let the people go. But the con-
fidence I have in my own mind that the appointed
hour has nearly come, makes me feel all the more
confidence in the certain and final triumph of
our Union arms, because I do not believe that
this great investment of Providence is to be
wasted."
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 73
The allusion to the impending Proclamation
of Emancipation by the President will be ob-
served. Daily now for two years the Governor
had not ceased to labor for it, in public and pri-
vate. By speech and letter and personal appeal,
by every appliance which wisdom and ingenuity
could suggest, he had helped to work on the
President for that end. But up to the final mo-
ment he trembled lest Mr. Lincoln might not be
equal to the emergency. He knew that Gen-
eral McClellan had written to the President from
Harrison's Landing, that " a declaration of radi-
cal views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly
disintegrate our present armies ; " and it was to
strengthen the purpose of the President that he
joined at this time in the project of the conven-
tion of Governors at Altoona. His intention
was to counteract the influence of McClellan and
the " conservatives," by uniting the various
States, through their chief magistrates, in an
expression of loyalty and a pledge of support to
the President in declaring emancipation as a mil-
itary necessity. The plan had effect. The Gov-
ernors were on their way to Altoona when the
President anticipated their purpose, and pre-
ferred to accept their support of an act already
done rather than their counsel to do it. Gov-
ernor Andrew was at Philadelphia when the
74 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
Proclamation of September 22 appeared. He
sent back to Boston that day an unofficial letter
too characteristic to be omitted.
" Philadelphia, September 22, 1862.
"Dear A : Before starting for Altoona,
I have telegraphed to Mr. Claflin, and I now
write more fully to you. The Proclamation of
Emancipation by the President is out. It is a
poor document, but a mighty act ; slow, somewhat
halting, wrong in its delay till January, but
grand and sublime after all. ' Prophets and
kings ' have waited for this day, but died without
the sight. We must take up the silver trumpet
and repeat the immortal strain on every hill-top
and in every household of New England. Our
Republicans must make it their business to sus-
tain this act of Lincoln, and we will drive the
4 conservatism ' of a pro-slavery Hunkerism and
the reactionaries of despotism into the very caves
and holes of the earth. The conquest of the
rebels, the emancipation of the slaves, and the
restoration of peace founded on liberty and per-
manent democratic ideas ! Let this be our plat-
form. No bickerings, no verbal criticism, no
doubting Thomases, must halt the conquering
march of triumphant liberty. Go in for the
WAR. Hurry up the recruitments. Have
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 75
grand war meetings all over the State. I hope
our friends will begin at Faneuil Hall to-morrow
night. Let not the rebels gain by delays, eith-
er in Massachusetts or in the field. We can
' knock the bottom out ' of the Hunker ' citizens' '
movement before ten days are gone. But tell
Claflin, Sumner, Wilson, etc., etc., to strike
quick. NoW) now, NOW ! Our cause is bright
if we are true.
Yours ever,
JOHN A. ANDREW."
The address to the President in which the
Governors united on September 24 at Altoona,
was written by Governor Andrew\ Those pas-
sages which relate to the Proclamation of Eman-
cipation were as follows : —
" We hail with heartfelt gratitude and encour-
aged hope the Proclamation of the President is-
sued on the 22d of September, declaring eman-
cipated from their bondage all persons held to
service or labor as slaves in the rebel States
where rebellion shall last until the 1st day of
January now next ensuing. The right of any
persons to retain authority to compel any portion
of the subjects of the National Government to
rebel against it or to maintain its enemies, im-
plies in those who are allowed possession of such
76 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
authority, the right to rebel themselves. And
therefore the right to establish martial law or
military government in a State or Territory in
rebellion implies the right and the duty of such
government to liberate the minds of all men liv-
ing therein, by appropriate proclamations and
assurances of protection, in order that all who
are capable, intellectually and morally, of loyalty
and obedience, may not be forced into treason
and become unwilling tools of rebellious traitors.
To have continued indefinitely the most efficient
cause, support, and stay of the rebellion would
have been, in our judgment, unjust to the loyal
people whose treasure and lives are made a wil-
ling sacrifice on the altar of patriotism ; would
have discriminated against the wife who is com-
pelled to surrender her husband, and against the
parent who surrenders his child to the hardships
of the camp and the perils of battle, in favor of
rebel masters permitted to retain their slaves.
It would have been a final decision alike against
humanity, against the right and duty of the gov-
ernment, and against sound and wise national
policy. The decision of the President to strike
at the root of the rebellion will lend new vigor
to the efforts and new life and hope to the hearts
of the people.
" Cordially tendering to the President our re-
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 77
spectfiil assurances of personal and official con-
fidence, we trust and believe that the policy now
inaugurated will be crowned with success, will
give speedy and triumphant victory over our en-
emies, and secure to this Nation and this People
the blessing and favor of Almighty God. We
believe that the blood of the heroes who have
already fallen, and of those who may yet give
their lives to their country, will not have been
shed in vain."
The coincidence of language in these closing
phrases, with the famous sentence (written by
Chief Justice Chase) at the end of President
Lincoln's final Proclamation of January 1, 1863,
is remarkable.
Governor Andrew's letter of September 22,
which has been quoted, contains, perhaps, the
nearest approach to political partisanship which
he manifested during the whole war ; and noth-
ing save the opposition of the " citizens' " party,
so called, in Massachusetts, to the policy of
emancipation, could have drawn from him even
that expression. Although thoroughly identified
always with the political party with which he
acted, until 1848 as a Whig, from then to 1854
as a Free-Soiler, and after 1854 as a Republican,
yet he was always a stranger to political intrigue.
His original nomination for governor was effected
78 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
(as has been alluded to) by a genuine popular
impulse ; and although nominated and elected as
a member of the Republican party, his policy of
uniting all parties and classes in the support of the
war sustained him in his independence of partisan
influences. During his whole administration he
never once consulted with the State Committee
of his party as to any of his measures or appoint-
ments, although its chairman, Hon. William
Claflin (now Lieutenant Governor of the State),
was one of his closest friends. Another close
friend, but one whom no consideration of friend-
ship ever restrained from telling unpalatable
truths, and whose testimony thus has an added
value (Hon. Francis W. Bird, who for some years
was a member of his Executive Council), has re-
corded his impressions of this trait of the Gover-
nor's administration, in a series of interesting per-
sonal reminiscences as follows : —
" Governor Andrew had no ' kitchen cabinet.'
By this I mean that the influence of any man or
any set of men could never be traced as control-
ling or materially affecting his policy or acts.
He had, indeed, a remarkable faculty of finding
the best men in the State to aid him in regard to
any special measure ; and undoubtedly he availed
himself very largely of the assistance of such
men; but the methodizing, the organizing, the
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 79
concentrating of the different materials, was
always his own work. With original and inde-
pendent ideas and convictions of his own upon
the ultimate solution of our national controversy,
he was in no danger of losing sight of the great
end. At the same time, he recognized the fact
that there were many men about him superior to
himself in practical capacity to deal with methods,
some in one department, some in another; but
the superiority of those men upon special matters
gave them no right to control his general policy ;
and I think they never did.
" The same is true in regard to appointments
to office, both military and civil. No magistrate
could apply himself more carefully, laboriously,
and conscientiously, in filling any responsible posi-
tion, to find the right man for the right place ;
and while, in making appointments, he forgot
himself absolutely, if it was possible for a human
being to do so ; literally, as he used to say, never
making an appointment to suit himself ; and while
it always rejoiced him to oblige his friends, still
no importunities of the dearest friends could in-
duce him to make an appointment or recommend
a measure which did not accord with his sense of
public duty ; and I feel safe in saying that neither
his worst enemies, nor his friends who may at
times have felt disappointed or aggrieved by his
80 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
decisions against their recommendation, ever so-
berly believed that he acted under improper in-
fluences from any set or clique ; and that, looking
back over his whole administration, they cannot
detect the influence of any one person or set as
more potential or more constant than that of any
other."
Besides, he was avowedly adverse to all secret
societies, whether of a social, or charitable, or
religious, or political nature. In a letter which
he addressed in May, 1865, to a gentleman who
had written to him that some persons accused
him of being swayed by a connection with the
Masonic order, from signing the death-warrant
of Green, the Maiden murderer, he said : "I
authorize you to state that I never have been,
am not, and expect never to be, affiliated or con-
nected with, or a member of, any secret society
whatsoever. Without intending to comment or
reflect upon the views and action of others, I
have never been able to satisfy myself of the
expediency of the existence of any secret soci-
eties in a free republic."
This independence of partisan control alienated
from him all the trading politicians, and would
have broken down any ordinary man in caucuses
and conventions; but he possessed a strength
which was independent of small political man-
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 81
agers. They were always against him ; and the
influence of almost all the old leaders of his party
was against him also, from the day he was first
named for governor. This last he felt keenly,
and often expressed himself concerning it in pri-
vate ; but he was too magnanimous and public-
spirited ever to resent it by reprisals upon them,
although his opportunities were ample. As the
world goes, it was a natural jealousy on their
part. He had ridden into the lists, a stranger to
the old heroes of the political tourneys of the last
twenty years, and to their surprise and vexation
had carried off all their accustomed prizes. Dur-
ing the whole war, and after his return to private
life, to the day of his death, he was unquestion-
ably the first citizen of Massachusetts in the af-
fection of the people and the estimation of the
country. This they could never brook with
patience, nor could they ever comprehend the
manner of it.
His unflinching exercise of the veto power
also insured the opposition of that always large
class of legislators who are too self-conscious of
their own importance to appreciate the constitu-
tional duty of the Executive. During his official
term of five years he vetoed no less than twelve
bills or resolves of the Legislature. So did his
opinions concerning removals from office alienate
6
82 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
that same class of men. Only two removals were
made by him during the five years he was gov-
ernor, and in each of those cases he filed written
reasons for his action. In a few other instances,
not half a dozen in all, he notified civil officers
of his purpose to remove them unless they should
tender their resignations, and in every instance
he specified the causes of his determination.
In his military appointments he never asked
what were the political associations of the candi-
dates, provided only they were loyal men. Gen-
eral Butler, whom he designated to the command
of the Massachusetts militia sent to rescue Wash-
ington in 1861, had been the candidate of the
Breckenridge party for Governor, in opposition
to himself. Two years after the war began, he
was not aware, in regard to half the colonels of
the Massachusetts troops,, what had been their
political connections, and was quite surprised
when he was told one day, that, out of the first
fifteen colonels of three years' volunteers whom
he commissioned, only one third at the utmost
had voted for Mr. Lincoln for President, while
more than one third had voted for Mr. Brecken-
ridge. When it is remembered that the vote of
Massachusetts for Lincoln in 1860 was more than
one hundred and six thousand, while for Breck-
enridge it was only six thousand, the fact be-
comes more significant.
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 83
In regard to appointments over colored troops,
however, he demanded not only loyalty and abil-
ity, but sympathy with that arm of the service,
as a qualification. With the employment of col-
ored men as soldiers his fame is forever identified
beyond that of any other man ; and no one had
a clearer conception of the logical results of that
employment upon the civil and political rights
generally of that class of our people. In the
very first week of the war, he wrote, concerning
the enrollment of colored men in the militia, that
personally he knew "no distinction of class or
color in his regard for his fellow-citizens, nor in
their regard for our common country." In the
paramount duty of allegiance owed by colored
and white men alike to the national government,
he found a logical and legal solution of all the
technical difficulties in the way of emancipating
the slaves and employing them as soldiers.
The policy of many of our commanders during
the first year of the war, to expel from our mil-
itary lines, if not to surrender as fugitive slaves,
all colored men who there sought refuge, seemed
to him not only inhuman but suicidal. He came
into collision with General McClellan on the sub-
ject, at a time when that officer was at the
height of his own self-confidence, and when the
country was reposing in him so blind a trust that
84 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
he felt emboldened to stigmatize the Governor's
opinion as disloyal in presuming to differ from
his own.
In the autumn of 1861, after the disastrous
affair of Ball's Bluff, in which many of its gal-
lant officers fell, and others, including its col-
onel and major, w r ere made prisoners, the Twen-
tieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers
remained on the Upper Potomac in a division
commanded by Brigadier General Charles P.
Stone, who on September 23, 1861 (just a year
before President Lincoln's Emancipation Procla-
mation), had issued a general order (No. 16),
running as follows : —
" The General commanding has, with great
concern, learned that in several instances soldiers
of this corps have so far forgotten their duty as
to excite and encourage insubordination among
the colored servants in the neighborhood of their
camps, in direct violation of the laws of the
United States, and of the State of Maryland in
which they are serving.
" The immediate object of raising and support-
ing this army was the suppression of rebellion,
and the putting down by military power of those
ambitious and misguided people, who, unwilling
to subject themselves to the Constitution and laws
of the country, preferred the carrying out of
*
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 85
their own ideas of right and wrong to living in
peace and good order under the existing govern-
ment. While, therefore, it should be the pride
of every army to yield instan£ and complete obe-
dience to the laws of the land, it is peculiarly the
duty of every officer and enlisted man in this
army to give an example of subordination and
perfect obedience to the laws, and to show to
those in rebellion that loyal national soldiers sink
all private opinions in their devotion to the law
as it stands."
We have made so much progress since those
days that it needs effort now to realize that " the
law as it stands," thus referred to, meant the
Fugitive Slave Law, and that the purport of this
order, in plain English, was to enjoin upon the
troops to send back to their masters fugitive
slaves who had taken refuge within our military
lines.
During November, 1861, in filling the vacan-
cies made by the battle of Ball's Bluff, in the
roster of officers of this regiment, Governor An-
drew, on the recommendation of its lieutenant-
colonel, had promoted one of the lieutenants to
a superior rank. Soon afterwards he was ad-
vised that this officer had been concerned in
officiously returning some fugitive slaves. Im-
mediately he wrote to the lieutenant-colonel
86 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
stating what had thus been represented, and re-
questing him, if the alleged facts were true, to
inform the officer thus promoted, that had those
facts been learned in season, the promotion would
never have been made. Instead of replying to
the Governor, whether or not the alleged facts
were true (it proved afterwards that they were
not), the lieutenant-colonel forwarded the Gov-
ernor's letter to General Stone, who communi-
cated it to General McClellan ; and, all the mili-
tary gentlemen mentioned having worked them-
selves into indignation at what they considered
the Governor's presumption, some letters passed
between him on one side, and General Mc-
Clellan on the other, in which that officer
read more honest and healthy doctrine than in
those days often came to his eyes. The limits
of this sketch forbid the insertion of the whole
correspondence, but there is space to put on
record some extracts from the concluding letters.
That of General McClellan was dated on De-
cember 20, 1861, and he wrote : —
" In your letter the lieutenant-colonel is di-
rected to convey censure and reprimand to an
officer of his regiment for acts performed in the
line of his military duty. If the officer referred
to had been guilty of any infraction of military
law or regulation, the law itself points out the
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 87
method and manner for its own vindication, and
the channel through which the punishment shall
come. Any departure from this rule strikes im-
mediately at the root of all discipline and subor-
dination. The volunteer regiments from the
different States of the Union, when accepted and
mustered into the service of the United States,
become a portion of the Federal army, and are
as entirely removed from the authority of the
Governors of the several States, as are the troops
of the regular regiments. As discipline in the
service can only be maintained by the strictest
observance of military subordination, nothing
could be more detrimental than that any inter-
ference should be allowed outside the consti-
tuted authorities."
And, a few days afterwards (the Governor,
meanwhile, having answered the above letter), '
General McClellan forwarded, as if expressing
more fully his own sentiments, a copy of a letter
addressed to himself by General Stone, dated
December 15, in which that officer had trans-
mitted to head-quarters the Governor's letter to
the lieutenant-colonel, styling it " a most ex-
traordinary letter," and " respectfully requesting
the attention of the Major-General Commanding,
in the hope that he may be able to devise meas-
ures which shall in future prevent such unwar-
88 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE'
rantable and dangerous interference with the
subordinate commands of the army."
After thus opening, General Stone contin-
ued: —
" The fact that most of the soldiers in the
regiment referred to, were enlisted in the service
of the United States, in the State of which the
Governor referred to is the respected chief mag-
istrate, does not, I conceive, give his Excellency
a right to assume control of the interior dis-
cipline of the regiment, nor does it give him
authority to command the punishment of a meri-
torious officer for any offense, either real or im-
aginary."
" Thousands of brave men gathered into the
service of the Union (the whole Union), from
five or more different States of the Union, are
now serving in this division, and enduring un-
murmuringly cold, hardship, and fatigue, simply
because ambitious State officials at the South
have unconstitutionally and lawlessly used their
power to wrest from United States' officials the
trusts confided to them by the nation. The
usurpations of these ambitious State authorities
commenced in much smaller matters than this,
of assuming authority in a national regiment
serving in the field against the public enemy, far
removed from the State of which his Excellency
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 89
is Governor ; and it matters little to me whether
the usurpation comes from South or North,
Georgia or Massachusetts ; I feel it my duty to
bring the matter at once to an issue and, if pos-
sible, to arrest the evil before its natural fruits
(open rebellion) shall be produced.
" The course of Major Anderson, one year
since, in refusing to permit interference in the
internal affairs of his command in Fort Sumter,
on the part of the Governor of the State in
which he was serving the Union, was eminently
distasteful to the Governor of South Carolina ;
nevertheless, Major Anderson's sense of duty
prevented him from fulfilling that Governor's
desires. Disagreeable as it may be to me to do
anything distasteful to the Governor of any
State of the Union, I do not feel that it is con-
sistent with my sworn duty tp permit any Gov-
ernor to give orders affecting the discipline of
any regiment w T hich the Government of the
Nation has entrusted to my command. I am
not aware that there are here Michigan, New
York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, or Massachu-
setts troops. I do know that there are here
United States' troops collected from all these
States, and that they are carefully taught that
their duty is to serve the United States honestly
and faithfully against all those w r ho set themselves
90 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
in opposition to the Constitution and laws of the
United States, whosoever the opposers may be.
" I will merely add, for the satisfaction which
I know it will give to the Major-General Com-
manding, that I do not believe that in the in-
stance of the officer referred to in the letter of the
Governor, nor in any other instance, the orders
of the War Department in reference to fugitive
slaves have been violated by officers of this divis-
ion ; and I am equally happy to state that in no
instance within my knowledge and recollection
(with one exception), have the laws, on the same
subject, of the State of Maryland in which we
are serving, been violated by officers of the di-
vision. In that exceptional case the officer of-
fending promptly retired from the service."
The " issue " to which General McClellan and
General Stone thus sought to " bring the mat-
ter " was reached by a reply from the Governor,
on December 30 ; and the whole correspondence
was then laid by him before the President of the
United States. In this reply, the Governor
wrote : —
" This letter of Brigadier General Stone which
(taken in connection with your own letter, Gen-
eral, to which I have already had the honor to
reply), is thus adopted by you, and, at an interval
of several days from my reply to yours, is thus
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 91
forwarded to me without observation, as if with
intentional indorsement of its statements, inter-
pretations, and references, demands my attention.
" Claiming no merit for myself which does not
pertain equally to the humblest citizen of the
Republic (which, thanks be to God, still lives,
the refuge and citadel of Democratic Republican-
ism of all the earth), I yet do proudly and
serenely claim for the ancient Commonwealth
over which it is my undeserved honor to preside
as her Chief Executive Magistrate, and for the
office which I occupy and strive to fill, and for
my own administration of that office itself, the
absolute right, — earned by history, — of repel-
ling all that is said or insinuated in that letter.
Without the alacrity, devotion to the Union
cause, and energetic patriotism of Massachu-
setts, where to-day had been the Government ;
in whose hands the capital ; where, indeed, the
Union itself? And where, since these troubles
began, has been a person in any branch of ser-
vice, who has devoted more hours of day and
night to the simple, faithful, and untiring ser-
vice of the President of the United States and
his Department of War, in the cause of the
country ?
" Bred, myself, a lawyer, and educated in the
Massachusetts school, not only of patriotism
92 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
but of constitutional interpretation, I have been
neither ignorant nor unmindful of the limitations
of power, the proper jurisdiction and rights of
the Federal Government, nor, as the correspond-
ence with that government for the past nine
months most amply shows, of the complete duty
and right of that government to lead, and of
my own duty in aiding and following it in the
support of the rights and honor of us all. And
now, at the end of my first official term, I can-
not receive without a certain degree of honest
resentment the more than insinuation contained
in what is written by Brigadier General Stone,
about ' the usurpations of these ambitious State
authorities,' and the like.
" The remark of that officer that ' the fact that
most of the soldiers in the regiment referred to,
were enlisted into the service of the United
States in the State of which the Governor re-
ferred to is the respected Chief Magistrate,
does not, I conceive, give his Excellency a right
to assume control of the internal discipline of the
regiment, nor does it give him authority to com-
mand the punishment of a meritorious officer for
any offense, real or imaginary,' is the key to all
the errors of fact and inference, and of all the
impertinent remark which follows.
"But, first, General, I beg to call your attention
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 93
to the attempted belittling of the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, by the implication that all she
had to do with the Twentieth Regiment was,
that ' most of the soldiers ' were enlisted in
'the State.' The regiment was raised in the
State, under my authority, in response to a cer-
tain requisition, not for soldiers, but for ' ten
regiments. ,' from the Department of War. I
appointed and commissioned its officers, and the
regiment was recruited here, on our own soil, at
Camp Massasoit in the town of Dedham and
County of Norfolk, and marched from here to
Washington with every kind of equipment and
furniture recognized by the Army Regulations of
the United States, and all of it provided and
paid for by this Commonwealth, from its army
wagons, ambulances, and horses, and its Enfield
rifles (imported by Massachusetts from England
under contracts made by an agent sent there by
the State the next week after the fall of Sumter),
down to shoe-strings and tent-pins. Nor did we
omit to supply anything for which the gallant
Colonel William Raymond Lee (now a prisoner
in a felon's cell at Richmond), himself a regularly
educated officer and distinguished graduate of
West Point, suggested to me even a wish.
" I would to Heaven that he were back now at
the head of his regiment ; or that the Army of
94 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
the Potomac were hammering at his prison-door
with both hands — and neither hand averted to
protect the institution which is the cause of all
this woe.
" But, next, please to notice the allegation that
the Governor did ; assume control of the interior
discipline of the regiment,' — an averment for
which the letter to the lieutenant colonel affords
no shadow of justification (the propriety of which
letter was fully shown in my note to you of De-
cember 24), unless I am to understand that it is
wrong for Governors not to promote volunteer
officers, who, in pretended obedience to army
orders, break the laws in super-serviceable police
work in aiding the pursuit of fugitive slaves.
" The facts of which I wrote to the lieutenant-
colonel were in equal violation of the laws of the
United States and of the very General Order
(No. 16) issued by Brigadier General Stone
himself, and now forwarded, by copy, to me ;
and I had, unwittingly, promoted the officer who
was subsequently reported as guilty of the wrong.
Brigadier General Stone, it seems, was shown
my letter to the lieutenant colonel in which
I spoke of the reported conduct in the tone its
illegality and inhumanity alike deserved. If
the facts were not true, it was plain my letter
did not apply to them nor to the officer promoted.
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 95
This Brigadier General Stone and the lieutenant
colonel could see ; and they also saw and must
know that my correspondence was not, either in
substance or form, " a command of punishment."
And the lieutenant colonel's duty, if in fact the
young man had done only what he was compelled
to do by superior authority, was to have informed
me to that effect in reply. If otherwise, truth,
justice, and duty required him to inform the offi-
cer, named in my letter to him, that I had pro-
moted him in ignorance of what had occurred.
" I am sorry to perceive in the conduct of Brig-
adier General Stone and of the lieutenant col-
onel, & levity of mind which does not appreciate
the responsibility of the grave duties with which
the power of appointment charges the officer in
whom it is vested."
In the spring of the same year, while the
Massachusetts troops were on their way to
Washington, the Governor had had occasion to
define his opinions on a kindred subject in a
correspondence with General Butler, who was at
the time a Brigadier in command of the Massa-
chusetts militia, and not mustered into the United
States' service. On the 23d of April, 1861, while
the General, with the Fifth and Eighth Massachu-
setts regiments, was at Annapolis, endeavoring
to open communication with the beleaguered
96 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
capital, one of his staff-officers, by his direction,
telegraphed to the Governor that " this morning,
hearing of a threatened slave insurrection, Gen-
eral Butler tendered the forces under his com-
mand to Governor Hicks for its suppression."
It is not the purpose of this sketch to revive the
difficulties which then and afterwards occurred
between the Governor and General Butler ; but
inasmuch as the reply of the latter to the letter
which the Governor sent in answer to this dis-
patch was published at the time, the present seems
to be a proper occasion to place on record both
sides of the correspondence.
The Governor wrote on April 25, 1861 : —
" I have received through Major Ames a dis-
patch transmitted from Perryville, detailing the
proceedings at Annapolis from the time of your
arrival off that port until the hour when Major
Ames left you to return to Philadelphia.
" I wish to repeat the assurances of my entire
satisfaction with the action you have taken, with
a single exception. If I rightly understand the
telegraphic dispatch, I think that your action in
tendering to Governor Hicks the assistance of
our Massachusetts troops to suppress a threat-
ened servile insurrection among the hostile
people of Maryland, was unnecessary. I hope
that the fuller dispatches, which are on theii
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 97
way from you, may show reasons why I should
modify my opinion concerning that particular
instance, but, in general, I think that the matter
of servile insurrection among a community in
arms against the Federal Union is no longer to
be regarded by our troops in a political, but
solely from a military point of view, and is to be
contemplated as one of the inherent weaknesses
of the enemy, from the disastrous operation of
which we are under no obligation of a military
character to guard them in order that they may
be enabled to improve the security which our
arms would afford so as to prosecute with more
energy their traitorous attacks upon the Federal
Government and Capital.
" The mode in which such outbreaks are to be
considered should depend entirely upon the loy-
alty or disloyalty of the community in which
they occur ; and in the vicinity of Annapolis I
can, on this occasion, perceive no reason of mili-
tary policy why a force summoned to the defense
of the Federal Government, at this moment of
all others, should be offered to be diverted from
its immediate duty to help rebels who stand with
arms in their hands obstructing its progress to-
wards the City of Washington. I entertain no
doubt that whenever we shall have an oppor-
tunity to interchange our views personally on
7
98 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
this subject, we shall arrive at entire concordance
of opinion."
The General, replying on May 9, 1861, and
addressing the reply to the Governor as his com-
mander-in-chief, after defending his action in the
particular instance, on the ground that by reason
of it " confidence took the place of distrust,
friendship of enmity, and brotherly kindness of
sectional hate," so that he believed that at the
time he wrote there was " no city in the Union
more loyal than the city of Annapolis," con-
tinued : —
" But I am to act hereafter, it may be, in an
enemy's country, among a servile population,
where the question may then arise as it has not
yet arisen, as well in a moral and Christian as
in both a political and military point of view.
What shall I then do? Will your Excellency
bear with me a moment while this question is
being discussed ? I appreciate folly the force of
your Excellency's suggestion as to the inherent
weakness of the rebels arising from the prepon-
derant servile population. The question then is,
in what manner shall we take advantage of that
weakness ? By allowing, and of course arming,
that population to rise upon the defenseless
women and children of the country, carrying
rapine, arson, and murder, all the horrors of San
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 99
Domingo a million times magnified, among those
whom we hope to reunite with us as brethren,
many of whom are already so, and those worth
preserving will be when this horrible madness
shall have passed away or been thrashed out of
them ? Would your Excellency advise the troops
under my command to make war in person upon
the defenseless women and children of any part
of the Union, accompanied by brutalities too
horrible to be named ? You will say, God forbid.
If we may not do so in person, shall we allow
others to do so over whom we can have no re-
straint and exercise no control, and who, when
once they have tasted blood, may turn the very
arms we put in their hands against ourselves as
a part of the oppressive white race ? The read-
ing of history, so familiar to your Excellency,
will tell you the bitterest cause of complaint
which our fathers had against Great Britain in
the War of the Revolution was the arming by
the British ministry of the red man with the
tomahawk and the scalping-knife against the
women and children of the colonies, so that the
phrase ' May we not use all the means which
God and Nature have put in our power to sub-
jugate the colonies ? ' has passed into a legend
of infamy against the leader of that ministry who
used it in Parliament ? Shall history teach us
100 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
in vain ? Could we justify ourselves to our-
selves, although with arms amid the savage wild-
ness of camp and field we may have blunted
many of the finer moral sensibilities, in letting
loose four millions of worse than savages upon
the homes and hearths of the South ? Can we
be justified to the Christian community of Mas-
sachusetts ? Would such a course be consonant
with the teachings of our holy religion ? I have
a very decided opinion upon the subject, and if
any one desires, as I know your Excellency does
not, this unhappy contest to be prosecuted in
that manner, some instrument other than myself
must be found to carry it on.
" I may not discuss the political bearings of this
topic. When I went from under the shadow of
my roof-tree I left all politics behind me, to be
resumed only when every part of the Union is
loyal to the flag and the potency of the Govern-
ment through the ballot-box is established.
" Passing the moral and Christian view, let us
examine the subject as a military question. Is
not that State already subjugated which requires
the bayonets of those armed in opposition to its
rulers to preserve it from the horrors of a servile
war ? As the least experienced of military men,
I would have no doubt of the entire subjugation
of a State brought to that condition. When,
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 101
therefore, unless I am better advised, any com-
munity in the United States who have met me
in honorable warfare, or even in the prosecution
of a rebellious war in an honorable manner, shall
call upon me for protection against the nameless
horrors of a servile insurrection, they shall have
it. And, from the moment that the call is
obeyed, I have no doubt we shall be friends and
not enemies.
" The possibilities that dishonorable means of
defense are to be taken by the rebels against the
Government I do not now contemplate. If, as
has been done in a single instance, my men are
to be attacked by poison, or, as in another,
stricken down by the assassin's knife, and thus
murdered, the community using such weapons
may require to be taught that it holds within its
own borders a more potent means for deadly
purposes and indiscriminate slaughter than any
which it can administer to us."
The Governor never replied to this letter.
He deemed it a communication unjustifiable by
anything contained in his own letter to which it
purported to be in reply, and improper under
any circumstances from a subordinate to his com-
mander-in-chief; and he was impressed, rightly
or wrongly, that the writer, looking forward to
a speedy peace, wished to get on record some-
102 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
thing that should be available for renewing old
political associations, and misconstrued his let-
ter of April 25 for that purpose. And this
grieved him ; for, giving himself up so entirely
to the country's cause, and accepting, against
all his own old sentiments, the instrumentali-
ties of war, by which alone that cause could
be maintained, he looked for equal self-abne-
gation in others.
But the ensuing year brought great changes,
both in measures and in men. On January 1,
1863, General McClellan, having lost command
of the Army of the Potomac, was seeking to
retrieve his fortunes by the political aid of the
northern opponents of the war ; and General
Butler had just been superseded in command at
New Orleans, after a political administration of
that city in which he had been firmly supported
by the Governor, notwithstanding his conduct in
Massachusetts while gathering troops for the
Louisiana campaign ; and after which he would
hardly have repeated such a letter as was his of
May 9, 1861 — at least not in answer to such a
letter as was the Governor's of April 25.
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 103
CHAPTER VII.
He obtains official sanction of the Federal Government to the en-
listment of colored troops. — He raises the Fifty-fourth and
Fifty-fifth Massachusetts (colored) regiments. — Contest for their
equal rights with white troops in pay and rank. — Antagonism
with the War Department on these questions. — Appeal to the
President. — The Attorney General overrules the legal position of
the Secretary of War. — Correspondence with the President. —
Correspondence with Thaddeus Stevens. — He finally triumphs
and secures the rights of his colored soldiers. — His aid of enlist-
ment of colored soldiers everywhere. — He procures organiza-
tion of Freedmen's Inquiry Commission. — Services in behalf
of the freedmen. — Opposition to system of arbitrary arrests in
Loyal States. — He declines to take part in the Surratt trial.
At last, on January 26, 1863, the official
sanction of the National Government was granted
to the raising of colored troops. At a per-
sonal interview with the Secretary of War,
that day, at Washington, concerning the coast
defenses of Massachusetts and the garrison of
Fort Warren, the Governor obtained from him
written authority to raise " volunteer companies
of artillery for duty in the forts of Massachusetts
and elsewhere, and such companies of infantry
for the volunteer military service as he may find
convenient." With his own hand the Governor
104 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
then added to the writing, after the words quoted,
the further words, " and may include persons of
African descent organized into separate corps,"
and presented it to the Secretary for his signa-
ture ; and it was signed. ■
Hardly daring to communicate to the authori-
ties at Washington the extent of his purposes
under this authority, for fear lest it should be
revoked, he hastily returned with it to Boston,
and, the very day of his arrival, began the work
of raising the famous Fifty-fourth Regiment of
Massachusetts Infantry at the camp at Readville.
It was a proud and happy day for him, that bright
May morning when it stood, complete, before
the State House, the equal of the best Massa-
chusetts regiments which had preceded it, in the
quality, discipline, and equipment of the men,
and the character of the officers ; and when he
marched between its ranks down Beacon Street
to the old parade-ground of the Common, and it
passed him there in review in the presence of
more than fifty thousand spectators !
The Fifty-fifth Regiment, in all respects a
worthy companion of the Fifty-fourth, followed
it to the field ; and, after them, was raised and
sent a fine regiment of colored cavalry. But the
triumph over prejudice was not yet complete.
The right of the colored soldier to equality with
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 105
his white companions in arms remained to be
vindicated. This, in respect to pay, the Gov-
ernor effected after a long legal struggle over the
case of the chaplain of the Fifty-fourth, a colored
man ; and in respect to rank, after another long
struggle over the cases of certain lieutenants
whom he had promoted from among the enlisted
men of the same corps on the recommendation
of their superior officers.
In this contest for the rights of the colored
troops differences arose between him and the
Secretary of War, which never were reconciled.
The men of the Fifty-fourth Regiment, after the
bloody assault on Fort Wagner, found them-
selves denied by orders of the War Department,
their pay as soldiers, when they came to the
pay-table, but were tendered pay as cooks and
ditchers and stevedores, which they unanimously
refused to accept. They appealed for justifica-
tion to the Governor, under whose assurances
of their equal rights with all other soldiers they
had been enlisted ; and he appealed to the Secre-
tary, under whose assurances he had enlisted
them, and demanded the reason for this discrim-
ination between them and the white troops who
also had been enlisted under the same order of
January 26, 1863. The Secretary thereupon
sheltered himself behind a legal opinion of the
106 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
Solicitor of his Department. The Governor
indignantly denied the correctness of the- Solici-
tor's law, and appealed to the President, who
referred the subject to the Attorney General of
the United States, Mr. Bates, who overruled the
opinion of the Solicitor ; and at last the men re-
ceived their due, but not until after they and
their families had endured indescribable misery,
for more than a year intervened before their
justification was complete. The Governor sum-
moned the Legislature of Massachusetts in extra
session, in the autumn of 1863, and procured
an appropriation out of which to pay the Massa-
chusetts colored regiments, in this default of the
United States, and sent paymasters to South
Carolina with the money ; but the men refused
to accept from the State as a gratuity what they
claimed from the United States as a right.
The intensity of the Governor's indignation
at the monstrous injustice knew no bounds. The
opinion of the Attorney General, reversing that
of the Solicitor, was rendered on April 23, 1864.
Weeks then elapsed without any reversal by the
War Department of its action. The Governor
then, on May 13, 1864, appealed again to the
President in the following letter : —
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 107
" Commonwealth of Massachusetts, >
Boston, May 13, 1864. }
" To the President of the United States : —
" Sir : I respectfully call to the attention of
your Excellency the case of the Reverend
Samuel Harrison, lately chaplain of the Fifty-
fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry Vol-
unteers, and to the communication which I had
the honor to address to your Excellency on the
twenty-fourth day of March last, and the decis-
ion of the Attorney General of the United States
on the questions of law involved in the case,
which decision was submitted by him to your
Excellency under date of the twenty-third day
of April last and concluded in the following
words, namely : —
" ' Your attention having been specially called to the
wrong done in this case, I am also of opinion that your
constitutional obligation to take care that the laws be
faithfully executed, makes it your duty to direct the Sec-
retary of War to inform the officers of the Pay Depart-
ment of the Army that such is your view of the law, and
I do not doubt that it will be accepted by them as furnish-
ing the correct rule for their action.
" ' (Signed) EDWARD BATES,
Attorney General.
11 (Addressed) ' To the President."
" As a proper representative of Chaplain Har-
rison and also of all the non-commissioned officers
and privates of the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth
108 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
Regiments of Massachusetts Infantry Volunteers,
the rights and interests of all of whom are in-
volved in the settlement of the legal questions
aforesaid, — after having waited during a reason-
able time for the consideration of the subject by
your Excellency, — I do hereby respectfully
claim, and, so much as in me lies, I do by this
appeal to your Excellency hereby demand, of
and from the Executive Department of the Gov-
ernment of the United States the just, full, and
immediate payment to all the aforesaid officers and
men, of the sums of money now due to them as
volunteer soldiers of the United States serving in
the field, according to the 5th Section of the 9th
Chapter of the Acts of Congress of the year 1861,
placing the officers, non-commissioned officers and
privates of the volunteer forces in all respects, as
to pay, on the footing of similar corps of the
regular army.
" Already these soldiers, than whom none have
been more distinguished for toilsome work in the
trenches, fatigue duty in camp, and conspicuous
endurance and valor in battle, have waited dur-
ing twelve months, and many of them yet
longer, for their just and lawful pay.
" Many of those who marched in these regi-
ments from this Commonwealth have been worn
out in service, or have fallen in battle on James'
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 109
Island, in the assault upon Fort Wagner, or in
the affair of Olustee, yielding up their lives for
the defense of their native country, in which they
had felt their share of oppression, but from which
they never had received justice.
" Many also yet linger, bearing j honorable
wounds, but dependent upon public charity
while unpaid by the Government of the Nation
the humble wages of a soldier, and sick at heart
as they contemplate their own humiliation.
" Of others, yet alive and remaining in the ser-
vice, still fighting, and wholly unpaid, the fami-
lies have been driven to beggary and the alms-
house.
" These regiments, Sir, and others situated like
these, stung by grief and almost crazed by pangs
with which every brave and true man on earth
must sympathize, are trembling on the verge of
military demoralization. Already one man of a
South Carolina regiment raised under the orders
of Major-General Hunter with the same inter-
pretation of the laws of Congress now given by
the Attorney General of the United States, has
suffered the penalty of death for the military
offense of mutiny by refusing further obedience
to his officers, and declaring that by its own
breach of faith the Government of the United
States had released him from his contract of en-
110 SKETCH OF TEE OFFICIAL LIFE
listment as a soldier. The Government which
found no law to pay him except as a nondescript
or a contraband, nevertheless found law enough
to shoot him as a soldier.
"In behalf of the sufferings of the poor and
needy, of the rights of brave men in arms for
their country, of the statutes of Congress, and
of the honor of the Nation, I pray your Excel-
lency to interpose the rightful power of the Chief
Executive Magistrate of the United States, who
is bound by his oath c to take care that the laws
be faithfully executed;' and by its immediate
exercise to right these wrongs.
" I have the honor to remain
" Your Excellency's obedient servant,
" JOHN A. ANDREW,
The Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."
Even again, on May 27, the Governor ad-
dressed the President, fortifying the opinion of
Attorney General Bates by reference to the
similar opinion of William Wirt, when Attor-
ney General in 1823, on a similar question of
legal interpretation ; but from some cause which
it remains for history to disclose, the President
did not, and the Secretary of War would not,
act.
Even after all this there was delay of weeks,
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. Ill
almost of months; and finally the Governor
appealed from the Administration to Congress, in
a letter to Thaddeus Stevens, on June 4, 1864 ;
which, after reciting the legal arguments he had
urged upon the President and Secretary of War,
for justice to the colored troops, ended with this
passionate outburst : —
" It is a shame for the Administration to wait
for an act of Congress, knowing now what the
law really is, and what it has always been held
to be, even so long ago as the days of Madison
and Monroe. But, since the Administration does
wait, then Congress ought to act, and by legisla-
tive voice declare the law. For one, I will never
give up my demand for right and justice to these
soldiers. I will pursue it before every tribunal.
I will present it in every forum where any power
resides to assert their rights and avenge their
wrongs. I will neither forget nor forgive, nor
intermit my effort, though I should stand unsup-
ported and alone ; nor though years should pass
before the controversy is ended. And if I should
leave this world with this work undone, and there
should be any hearing for such as I elsewhere in
the Universe, I will carry the appeal before the
tribunal of Infinite Justice."
Under the pressure of legislation threatened
in Congress, the War Department at last sue-
112 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
cumbed ; and the men were paid in conformity
with the orders and the law as the Governor had
construed them from the first. His triumph was
complete ; but through what anxiety and misery
had he and his colored soldiers passed to win it !
Nevertheless, during the whole period, his zeal
for the employment of colored men as soldiers
did not relax in the slightest ; for, having faith
in democratic government, he had faith in the
will of the American people to do justice on any
and every question when brought to their com-
prehension ; and he believed not only that the
liberties of the colored race, but that the destinies
of the country itself were involved in this ques-
tion.
So he aided in the recruiting of colored
troops everywhere ; through Major Stearns in
Tennessee ; through General Wild in North
Carolina; through General Ullmann in New
Orleans. The records of the State House are
full of testimony of his constant services in this
behalf; and at the same time he was unremitting
in service generally for the freedmen. It was in
great part through his efforts that in March, 1863,
the original Inquiry Commission, of which Rob-
ert Dale Owen was chairman, was appointed by
the War Department to examine and report upon
the condition of the freedmen then newly eman-
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 113
eipated. In all the societies organized in Massa-
chusetts, during the ensuing months, for their care
and education, he was an active participant. And
when at last the Freedmen's Bureau was created,
he extended constant sympathy and support to
Major-General Howard. Recognizing that Mas-
sachusetts was pledged, above every other State,
to defend and justify the policy of emancipation,
he felt a double duty in the cause — as a magis-
trate and as a man.
Well might the colored citizens of Boston re-
solve, after his death, that " the colored soldiers
and sailors will ever remember that it is to him
they are indebted for equal military rights before
the law; " but the poor colored women and chil-
dren who ran by the side of the hearse over the
whole of its long route from Boston to Mount
Auburn, rendered a more touching tribute to his
benefactions to their race than ever can be ex-
pressed by the most eloquent eulogy. To them
and such as they he was always accessible, and
his heart and hand were always open.
Besides the question of the rights of colored
troops, another on which he differed widely from
the course of the Central Government was as to
the power of arbitrary arrest so loosely exercised
in the loyal States by the Federal Secretaries of
State and War ; and it was through his known
8
114 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
determination to support the courts of the Com-
monwealth in enforcing the liberty of any citizen
who should appeal to them for protection, that
Massachusetts was not made a field, like some
other States, for the operations of the military
police of Brigadier General Baker.* Abuse of
the freedom of speech, even in criticism of the
government during most trying periods, was, to
his mind, an evil less dangerous than its repres-
sion by unlawful power, whether of a Secretary
or a mob. In his address to the Legislature the
month after the beginning of the war, he said : —
" It is impossible that such an uprising of the
people as we have witnessed, so volcanic in its
energy, should not manifest itself here and there
in jets of unreasonable passion and even of vio-
lence against individuals who are suspected of
treasonable sympathies. But I am glad to be-
lieve that respect for every personal right is so
general and so profound throughout Massachu-
setts that few such demonstrations have occurred
in our community. Let us never, under any
conceivable circumstances of provocation or in-
dignation, forget that the right of free discussion
of all public questions is guaranteed te^ -very
individual on Massachusetts soil, by the settled
conviction of her people, by the habits of her
* The chief of the secret police of the War Department.
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 115
successive generations, and by express provisions
of her constitution. And let us, therefore, never
seek to repress the criticisms of a minority, how-
ever small, upon the character and conduct of
any administration, whether State or National."
The very faith in the principles of democratic
government which filled him with such ardor in
support of the war, inspired him with apprehen-
sion of the consequences of despotic use of
power by the Federal Administration ; and this
influenced largely his theory of the proper meth-
od of reconstruction. To such proceedings as
the trial of Mrs. Surratt by military commission
at Washington, in usurpation of the functions of
the civil courts which were there in open exer-
cise of appropriate jurisdiction, he was totally op-
posed ; and when, a year later, a retainer was
offered to him by the Secretary of State to con-
duct in behalf of the Government the trial of
her son, he peremptorily refused to accept it, lest
thereby he should commit himself to justifying,
even indirectly, the course of procedure against
the mother.
116 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
CHAPTER VIII.
Reverence for history of Massachusetts. — Fondness of old asso-
ciations. — Official dignity. — His body-guard. — Care of Har-
vard College. — Theories concerning education in Massachusetts.
— Schools of agriculture and mechanic arts. — Letter of Count
de Gasparin. — Views of the true future of New England. —
Testimony of Mr. Evarts and Mr. Godwin to the hopes enter-
tained of his future national career.
The Governor had a filial reverence for the
history of Massachusetts, and studied it faith-
fully. He was a member of the Massachusetts
Historical Society, and was president of the New
England Historical and Genealogical Society.
At the time of his death he was engaged in col-
lecting materials for an historical essay on the
Siege of Louisburg. Among the minor meas-
ures which he persistently urged upon the Leg-
islature until they adopted it, was a recommen-
dation to preserve the record of our Provincial
statutes, by transcribing a copy of them which
exists in the library of a gentleman of Norfolk
County. Few men possessed more thorough
knowledge of the unwritten history of our stat-
ute law. He was very fond of certain stately
old provisions of the Constitution of the Com-
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 117
monwealth, which in these democratic days it
would hardly be possible to reenact if the Con-
stitution were now to be framed anew ; such as
the recital of reasons for establishing by law per-
manent and honorable salaries for the Governor
and the justices of the Supreme Judicial Court,
and the whole chapter concerning Harvard Col-
lege. Even in little things he manifested the
same love of old associations. He took an al-
most boyish satisfaction in discovering that there
existed in the office of the State Printer an old
font of type, by means of which his first Thanks-
giving-day Proclamation could be printed in pre-
cisely the same style in which he had seen those
of Governor Brooks and Governor Eustis when
he was a boy, and when they used to be issued
on a broad sheet which hung over the pulpit cush-
ions when the preachers read them.
By virtue of the same quality of mind, although
he was delightfully familiar with his official asso-
ciates, and in respect to freedom of access by
the public was informal beyond precedent, yet
he was a lover of ceremonial, when it did not
interfere with what was essential and practical.
He had as keen sensibility of the dramatic as
of the mirthful, and in this sensibility found a
great source of inspiration. Of the dignity of
his office he was a jealous guardian. No better
118 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
evidence of that fact can exist than is to be
found in his printed correspondence with Major-
General Butler, in 1861 and 1862. In all his
official intercourse with the legislative body he
maintained scrupulously the traditional ceremo-
nies. The day of the Annual Election Sermon
was one of great delight to him. Marching to
the Old South Church, under the escort of
his body-guard and surrounded by his associates
in the government of the Commonwealth, it was
easy to see in his face, as he passed down the old
and narrow streets, the noble consciousness that
he was no unworthy successor of John Winthrop
and Samuel Adams.
The sentiment which grew up between him
and his body-guard was something beyond pre-
vious example. There was hardly a member of
it whose official respect for him was not mingled
with personal affection ; and though he had been
a private citizen again for two years when he
died, yet it was under their familiar escort that
his mortal remains passed to their last place of
rest.
This veneration for the history and traditions
of Massachusetts had much to do with his earn-
est care of Harvard College. The fact that it
was the constitutional college, so to speak, was
an irresistible claim upon his official regard, and
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 119
in its foundations he recognized the most avail-
able basis for building up, what the framers of
the Constitution anticipated, a " University."
He clearly foresaw how Massachusetts, by the
limitations of its territory, must become rela-
tively less and less powerful, man for man, than
newer States of greater area. The method by
which he expected to maintain the ascendency
of this State against such inevitable odds, was by
making the Massachusetts man count for more
on the destiny of the country than the man of
anv other State. For this he looked to facilities
for broader and deeper education here than can
be obtained elsewhere in America. It is impos-
sible to over-estimate the importance he attached
to ingrafting this policy on the legislation of the
State, and the regret he felt that it was not ap-
preciated and adopted by the Legislature on the
occasions when he urged it, especially in refer-
ence to the land grant of the United States for
schools of agriculture and the mechanic ' arts.
His inaugural address to the Legislature of 1863
contains a full exposition of his views on the
subject, which, however, seemed to be appre-
ciated more truly by scholars and thinkers all
over the world, than by the respectable body to
which they were addressed.
In illustration of the cordiality with which they
120 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
were received by our best friends in Europe many
proofs might be cited from the Governor's corres-
pondence. There is room here only for a single
letter, of the Count de Gasparin ; which is
interesting also as a recognition by that warm
friend of America, of the wisdom of the policy
of reconstruction advocated by his correspondent
more fully, two years later, in his valedictory ad-
dress upon retiring from office at the close of the
war.
" Valleyres, Canton de Vaud,
Suisse, 9 Juin, 1863.
i
" Monsieur : Vous avez bien voulu me faire
envoyer des documents que je viens de lire avec
un vif int^ret, et dont j'^prouve le besoin de vous
remercier.
, " Quel noble histoire que celle de Massachu-
setts! Quel grand role remplit la Nouvelle
Angleterre tout entire depuis la r^volte odieuse
du Sud ! Je comprends bien que les champions
de l'esclavage vous detestent plus par jalousie et
que certaines imaginations perverties de l'Ouest
revent une Confederation qui serait d6barrass£e
de vous.
" Tenez bon, je vous en supplie ! Continuez a
appuyer purement et simplement le gouverne-
ment de M. Lincoln. Ne vous divisez pas ! et
vous verrez que malgr£ quelques fautes (surtout
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 121
dans la direction de la guerre) vous finirez par
atteindre le but.
" Ce serait un bien grand jour, celui ou FUnion
serait r^tablie, ou Fesclavage serait definitivement
aboli, ou la prosp£rit£ du Sud serait fondle sur
de nouvelles et plus sures bases, oii la diminu-
tion rapide de Parm^e serait d6cr£t6e, ou les
Etats-Unis commenceraient a revenir vers leurs
petits armies et leurs petits budgets, ou les mes-
ures de repression et de confiscation seraient
abolies ! Non seulement il faut r^tablir FUnion,
mais il faut la r^tablir au profit de la liberte ; et
ce second objet est plus important encore que le
premier. Si vous aboutissez a une regime de
dictature militaire et d'oppression, de garnison
dans le Sud, il y aurait lieu de s'affliger beau-
coup.
" Mais j'ai de meilleures esp^rances. Je les ai
surtout lorsque je vois ces adresses si remarqua-
bles ou respire un sentiment de patriotisme, de
liberalisme, et de vraie pi£t£. Vous priez ! Vous
regardez a Celui qui seul peut vous delivrer!
Soyez sur qu'il vous reserve de grandes benedic-
tions.
" Parmi les sujets que vous traitez, je suis frappe
de votre projet relatif a Fenseignement sup^rieur
agronomique. Mon p6re avait donn6 vie a un
projet pareil, mais FInstitut de Versailles a suc-
comb6 sous le poids des n6cessit6s politiques.
122 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
" Vous connaissez l'int^ret profond que m'in-
spirent les Etats-Unis. Cet int^ret n'a pu que
s'accroitre par la lecture des documents que je
dois a votre obligeance.
" Permettez, Monsieur, que de loin je vous serre
respecteusement la main, en priant Votre Excel-
lence de croire a mes sentiments de haute estime
et de devouement.
"A. de GASPARIN." *
* The following is a translation of the letter in the text : —
Valleyres, Canton op Vaud, )
** Switzerland, June 9, 1863. >
" Sir: I have just read, with a lively interest, the documents
which you were so kind as to cause to be sent to me, and for which
I feel the need of expressing to you my thanks.
" What a noble history is that of Massachusetts ! What a grand
part all New England has played since the odious revolt of the
South! I fully comprehend how the defenders of Slavery hate
you the more from jealousy, and how certain perverted imagina-
tions in the West dream of a confederation which shall be inde-
pendent of New England.
" Remain steadfast, I beg you ! Continue to support purely and
simply the government of Mr. Lincoln. Never divide, and in
spite of some errors (especially in the management of the war) you
will end by attaining your object.
" It will be indeed a great day when the Union shall be reestab-
lished, and when Slavery shall be definitively abolished ; when
the prosperity of the South shall be founded upon new and surer
bases ; when the rapid disbanding of the army shall be ordered ;
when the United States shall once more return to their small
armies and small budgets ; when the measures of repression and
confiscation shall be abolished !
"It is not only necessary to reestablish the Union, but to re-
establish it in the interest of Liberty, and this second object is even
more important than the first. If you end by adopting a military
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 123
In an address which the Governor delivered
before the New England Agricultural Society on
September 9, 1864, the nature of the occasion
permitted him to introduce the same subject, and
to treat it more rhetorically than was possible on
the previous occasion mentioned. Anticipating
the end of the rebellion, he said : —
" I have not failed to perceive nor to exult in
the thought of the boundless possibilities of
grandeur and beneficent power which pertain
to the future of our America. I do not forget
that when the national jurisdiction over all our
States and Territories shall resume its unques-
tioned sway, and our national career shall begin
dictatorship and measures of oppression such as garrisons in the
South, there will be great reasons for regret. But I have better
hopes, and especially when I see these remarkable addresses
breathing such a sentiment of patriotism, liberality, and true piety.
You pray ! You look to Him, who alone can deliver you ! Be sure
that God reserves for you great blessings.
" Among the subjects of which you treat I am struck with your
project relative to a superior agricultural instruction. My father
originated a similar project, but the Institute of Versailles had
to give way under the weight of political necessities.
" You know the profound interest with which the United States
inspire me. This interest could only be increased by reading the
documents you have obliged me by sending.
" Permit me, Sir, though at a distance, respectfully to press your
hand, praying your Excellency to believe me
" With sentiments of the highest esteem
and devotion, yours, etc.,
A. de GASPARIN."
124 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
anew, the accelerated increase of wealth and of
population in their necessary distribution and
diffusion will, year by year, constantly diminish
the relative material strength of these North-
eastern States. The broad lands, the deep soils,
the cheap farms, the coal mines, the gold fields,
the virgin forests, the oil wells, the cotton plant,
and the sugar cane, of the West and of the
South, of the Gulf and of the Pacific coast, can-
not fail in their attractions. The swelling tide
of immigrant populations will flow across these
Atlantic borders to those alluring homes and
seats of industry. Along with many better men
will come the greedy adventurers, some of them
ignorant, some of them sordid, unblest by filial
love or patriotic sentiment, to seize the opportu-
nities of golden fortune. The wild chase for
gain, the allurements of Nature herself, the
temptations of that fevered life which distin-
guishes the youth of society in fertile and fruit-
ful States, containing within themselves of
necessity a certain measure of social and public
danger, suggest to us in advance the duty and
the destiny of New England.
" She is to be, in the long and transcendent
future of the Republic, the great conserving in-
fluence among the States. For nearly two cen-«
turies and a half, already, have her people kept
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 125
the vestal fire of personal and public liberty
brightly burning in her little town democracies.
Obedient to order, and practicing industry as well
as loving individual freedom, they have acquired
at last an instinct which discriminates between
license and liberty, between the passion of the
hour and the solemn adjudications of law. They
possess the traditions of liberty, they inherit ideas
of government, they bear about in their blood
and in their bones the unconscious tendencies of
race, which rise almost to the dignity of recollec-
tions and which are more emphatic and more
permanent than opinions. Bjfrthe toil of more
than seven generations they have acquired and
hold in free tenure their titles and their posses-
sions. The dignity of the freehold, the sacred-
ness of the family, the solemnity of religious
obligation, the importance of developing the in-
tellect by education, the rightful authority of
government, the rightfulness of property fairly
earned or inherited, as flowing from the inalien-
able self- ownership of man and the rights of
human nature ; the freedom of worship, the idea
of human duty, expanded and enforced by the
consciousness of an immortal destiny, are alike
deeply imbedded in the traditions and convictions
of the immense and controlling majority of our
people.
126 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
" If there is aught which men deem radical-
ism, or fear as dangerous speculation, in our
theology or our politics, I call mankind to bear
witness that there is no child so humble that he
may not be taught in all the learning of the
schools, no citizen so poor that he may not aspire
to any of the rewards of merit or honorable ex-
ertion, not one so weak as to fall below the equal
protection of equal laws, nor one so lofty as to
challenge their restraints ; no church nor bishop
able to impose creed or ritual on the uncon-
vinced conscience ; no peaceful, pious worship
which is unprotected by the State. Thus liberty
stands, and the law supports liberty ; popular
education lends intelligence to law and gives
order to liberty, while religion, unfettered by
human arbitration between the soul of man and
the throne of the Infinite, is left free to impress
the individual conscience with all the sanctions
of its supreme behests, and of its celestial
teachings.
" Your past history is a record of many great
lives and great actions ; of men, to our way of
thinking now oftentimes found narrow and even
obstinate, but yet heroic and sincere ; of genera-
tions worthy to bear along and hand down the
precious seeds from which have sprung the ideas
and institutions that give dignity and welfare to
a nation.
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 127
" Agriculturists ! Yeomen of New England !
Be faithful to her ideas, to her history, her insti-
tutions and her character. Behold and adorn
your Sparta ! Reclaim and cultivate the untilled
lands which still comprise more than two-thirds
the area of the six New England States. Deepen
and widen the foundations of your seminaries and
schools of learning ; encourage genius as well as
industry. Invite hither and hold here the pro-
found thinkers, the patient students of nature,
those tireless watchers who wait upon the stars,
or weigh the dust upon an insect's wing. Dis-
card and discourage alike the prejudices of igno-
rance, and the conceits of learning. Remember
that, even to-day, there is no man so wise that
he understands the law which regulates the rela-
tion of any fertilizer to any crop ; that few have
ever observed the mystery of that wonderful in-
fluence of the first impregnation of the dam
upon the future offspring of whatever sire ; that
the origin and contagion of the cattle disease or
pleuro-pneumonia, remain hitherto without ade-
quate scientific exploration ; that the practical
farmers and men of science all combined under-
stand as little the destructive potato-rot which
concerns the economy of every farm and every
household, as the aborigines who first descried
the Mayflower understood of the poems of
128 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
Homer or the philosophy of Aristotle. Not
undervaluing the past achievements of science,
remember how infinite the extent and variety of
the conquests which yet remain to her. Let me
exhort you also to bear in mind, that the great
discoverers of knowledge are like prophets, ap-
pearing but seldom, and on great occasions ; that
all genius is an intellectual century-plant, and
that he who would make the time great, and the
people noble, must not confound the mere dis-
tribution of commonplace facts, elementary or
traditional knowledge, with those conquests and
acquisitions which flow from patient and original
explorations.
" The uses and influence of true learning, the
power which flows from its sincere cultivation,
are so great and enduring, that were it a task
and not all a delight, I would not cease to urge
and advocate, in this presence, the duty which is
imposed on a people possessing the opportunities
of our own. To all peoples, to all sections, as to
each individual man, are open their separate
careers. They can forfeit their places: but they
can scarcely exchange them. You of New
England may forget that you are of the stock
that produced Jonathan Edwards, but you can-
not make the cotton plant flourish in New
Hampshire. You may turn your backs in
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 129
jealousy or disdain on Bowdoin and Dartmouth
and Harvard and Brown and Yale. You may-
set the village sexton above Cleaveland or Silli-
man or Agassiz. But when you have declined
the sceptre of knowledge, you have not made
the Merrimac or the Connecticut navigable like
the Ohio, the Missouri, the Mississippi, or the
Cumberland. You will win no glory by any
narrow competition, or by returning one railing
word for another. Your greatness must be found
hereafter where it has been found hitherto, in
the highest development and cultivation of the
faculties of men. Let thoughtless politicians
propose to leave New England out in the cold,
if they choose. I think the world will keep a
warm place for her while Vermont leads the
hemispheres in the intelligence and success of
her sheep breeding, while Alvan Clark makes a
telescopic object glass which is the marvel of
astronomers, while the new Museum of Zoology
at Cambridge exceeds, in the variety and extent
of many important classes of specimens, the more
renowned museums of London and Paris. Of
what account will be the sneers at Massachusetts
of those 'who hold it heresy to think,' so long
as one man's labor in Massachusetts is found by
the census to be as productive of real wealth as
the labor of five men in South Carolina, while*
9
130 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
the annual earnings of her industry exceed the
annual earnings per capita of any other commu-
nity in the world ? Schools, colleges, books, the
free press, the culture of the individual every-
where, the policy of attracting, encouraging and
developing all the great qualities of the head
and heart, — in a word, the production and
diffusion of Ideas, — in these shall rest for ever
the secret of your strength to maintain your true
position. I implore you to unite and not divide,
in your policy. Whenever you can create a
great school or find a great professor, unite to
strengthen the school and to make sure of the
man. Our system of diffusing knowledge
through the local schools, our plan of distribu-
ting elementary instruction, are things of which
we are sure. But your district schools will
themselves go to seed, your knowledge will be-
come bigoted and mean, unless you remember
that the encouragement of these higher institu-
tions from which they are fed and where their
teachers are themselves taught, is as needful as
the creation of the head of water above the dam
is to the spindle's point.
" I beg to exhort you, then, to put faith in
Ideas ; in the orderly arrangement of knowledge ;
in the power to search out the hidden things of
nature ; in the practical application of the highest
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 131
and largest truth to the wants and affairs of
man's daily life. Lead off, representative farmers
of New England, and let this dear, old, rocky
homestead of thought and of liberty, remain for
countless ages the fountain of generous culture,
science, learning, and art ! Your influence will
tell then, with beneficent and forever expanding
power, on the destiny of the nation. You will
live — the true conservatives of the civil state
and of social life — ' exempted from the wrongs
of time and capable of perpetual renovation.' '
Entertaining views so clear of the future re-
lations of New England to the Union, and
devoted so loyally to its welfare, it is almost
impossible to overestimate the influence he would
have exerted on that future, had he been spared
to that limit which we assign as the full term of
human life.
Mr. William M. Evarts, addressing a meeting
to commemorate his services, truly said : " We
do not, I fear, sufficiently appreciate the very
great position which Governor Andrew had
gained for himself at the age which he had
reached. In this country, in whatever pursuit
we attempt success, to whatever we devote our
abilities and our labors, we all do our own climb-
ing. It will be found that in the vast area of
public influence in national affairs, no man fairly
132 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
gains the position which can make him, known
until he reaches the age of fifty. Mr. Webster,
than whom no other man in our time has made a
greater personal impression of talents and of
power, was of the age at which Governor Andrew
died, when he made his speech in the Senate in re-
ply to Hayne. And how large a proportion of the
admirers of Mr. Webster as an orator, a states-
man, and a man of intellect, date their whole
knowledge and appreciation of his eminence,
not to say his preeminence, from that manifesta-
tion of his authority and his power.
" Governor Andrew led a life, the importance
and the value of which up to this time cannot be
overestimated. Besides his direct authority in
his own State, who can measure the influence
which he exerted over the colder natures or the
duller intelligences of the public men of other
States with whom he was brought in contact !
Yet we do not err at all when we say and feel
that up to the time of his death, to human ob-
servation, he had been preparing himself and
gaining that opinion of mankind, that fame which
after death is superior to power in life, which was
to enable him to fill a greater, a wider, and a
more useful part in the future of our country.
" All this is now disappointed. We see that
what seemed preparatory, what seemed to be
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW, 133
but a collection of means and power for the
greatest need of statesmanship in this country,
was not so designed by Providence, unless his
mantle may fall upon, unless his influence may
guide, unless his spirit may imbue his country-
men for this severe trial of public virtue and
ability — the process of reconstruction. But
whatever may happen to us or to our country,
we are sure that Governor Andrew's name and
fame are safe. He will go down with the whole,
complete, genuine heroic fame of Governor
Samuel Adams of the Revolution, and of James
Otis. Nobody shall divide his honors ; none shall
disparage his repute. Fortunate in his life,
complete in the distinction which he had gained,
useful for others, gloriously for himself, he has
lived and he has died."
And, to illustrate how the appreciation of
what Governor Andrew had accomplished, as
well as the hope of yet greater public services
from him, were common to patriotic men of every
school of political construction, some of the re-
marks with which Mr. Parke Godwin preceded
Mr. Evarts on the same occasion, may here be
quoted : —
" Governor Andrew," he said, " always
seemed lo me one of those unusual combina-
tions of intellect with heart that constitute the
134: SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
groundwork of a truly great individuality. His
intellect was clear, sagacious, and strong; and
his heart was at once tender and sympathetic,
yet brave, hopeful, and manly ; both equally com-
prehensive and capacious. Simple as a child in
his manners ; gentle as a woman in his affections ;
earnest as the enthusiast in his persuasions of
truth, and steadfast as the martyr to his own
interior faith ; he was yet prudent, moderate and
wise as the statesman, in his action. Indeed,
without disparagement of others, I may say that
Governor Andrew exhibited, in a higher degree
than most men, the rare qualities that distinguish
the statesman from other forms of human char-
acter. He was the statesman as the statesman
differs from the mere politician on one side and
the simple philanthropist on the other. With
none of the politician's spirit of intrigue or self-
seeking, he had more than the politician's sagac-
ity and foresight. With all the philanthropist's
benevolence and zeal, he had more discernment,
providence, and wisdom than ordinarily falls to
that manner of men. His sensibilities enticed
and ennobled his judgment, but his judgment
never surrendered the reins to his sensibilities.
The fire of his love blazed high, showing the
path on every side of him, but never so high as
to confuse the pure light of his reason. 4 The
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 135
perfect lawgiver,' says Macaulay, ' is a just
temper between a mere man of theory who can
see nothing but general principles, and the mere
man of business who can see nothing but partic-
ular circumstances.' In Governor Andrew the
two extremes were happily blended. He had
faith in the ideal, the infinite, the perfect, and
therefore was a man of principle ; but he had
knowledge also of the actual, the limited, the
circumstantial, and therefore he was a man of
methods. His aims were never too lofty to be
practicable, and his actions never so low as to
swerve from the direction of his aims. Politics
with him was a science of truth, but it was at
the same time an art of adjustment, of the ad-
justment of that which is, to that which ought to
be, but by processes that are sure and therefore
steady in their results, and not by jerks and leaps
which exhaust themselves in the very effort.
Inflexibly honest in his own convictions, his sin-
cerity always identified him with his cause ;
while his kindliness and justness won him the
respect and esteem of those who hated his cause.
This was because he worked by persuasion, not
blows; by the persuasions of argument and
character, and not force ; by the law of love,
and not the love of law or rule. In these
respects he often struck me as a man of the
•
136 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
ancient mould, of that grand pattern framed in
earlier days ; of the stamp and rank of the rev-
olutionary statesmen, the Madisons, the Hamil-
tons, the Jays, who saw truth and clung to it
with their inmost hearts, but who did not over-
look or disdain the means of making that truth ef-
fective in institutions and measures — men whose
clearsighted and far-reaching vision, penetrating
the difficulties of the present, expanded into a
prescience of the developments of the future,
for which they provided.
46 How nobly were all these qualities exhibited
during the brief official career of Governor An-
drew ! With what marvelous foresight he had
prepared his State for the war while others were
yet debating whether there would be a war !
With what magnetism a single word in his dis-
patch concerning the Massachusetts soldiers who
fell in Baltimore, that their bodies should be
4 tenderly ' cared for and sent home, touched
all our hearts even to tears ! How, through all
the dreary and protracted struggle he was always
equipped, always cheerful, and always in the
advance ! How the good Lincoln knew that
there was one shoulder at least upon which he
could ever lean his weary hands for support!
And how, when the deadly strife was over, was
the sense of justice tempered with the spirit of
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW 137
magnanimity, so that he prosecuted peace with
the same ardor that he had prosecuted war.
O, what a loss is such a man to his personal
and political friends ! What a greater loss to
his State, which he had ruled, in Milton's words,
6 with a mind extended and of the divinest met-
tle ! ' What an incomparably greater loss still
to the Nation, to whose future councils he would
have brought so much of insight, prudence, gen-
erosity, courage, and justice ! May we not say
of him, as Fisher Ames said of Hamilton, that if
we w r eep to think of what he was, the very soul
grows liquid at the thought of what he might
have been ! "
^ftftto*
138 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
CHAPTER IX.
His sensibility. — Anxiety concerning conduct of affairs at Wash-
ington. — Causes of his death. — His cheerful and mirthful dis-
position. — Special subjects of study. — Favorite amusements.
— Administration of domestic affairs of the State. — Opposition
to capital punishment. — Communications to the Legislature. —
His manuscript. — His social conversation. — His eloquence. —
His pecuniary means. — He resumes practice at the bar on re-
tiring from office, refusing various public stations. — Familiarity
with the Bible. — Religious catholicity. — The return of the
flags.
By nature the Governor's sympathies were
strong and deep, and the instances of private dis-
tress which he was called to see during the war
wore on him terribly. Gradually he became
accustomed to repress external manifestations of
emotion, but his sensibilities were not blunted by
use. Internally he endured what only those to
whom he opened his heart can ever know. Per-
haps the actual wear and tear was increased by
this suppression of external signs; and, besides
his private sympathies, there were anxieties as
to the course of public affairs which he felt
keenly beyond description, but which, for the
sake of the public welfare, he concealed from ob-
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 139
servation. Never shunning responsibilities, yet
he was fully conscious of their weight. In illus-
tration of this, one extract from a letter which he
wrote on January 14, 1863, to his friend, Mr.
Bird, may here be quoted : —
" We are not to be saved in Washington by
any machinery whatever. We can be saved,
and that after we shall have passed through a
great purgation, only by a revival of the religion
of patriotism, and the power of a resurrection
getting its hold on our own friends who are set
for the defense of the people and the truth which
is their salvation. Floundering along, without
clear purpose, wise, united, and practical states-
manship, without any real head, how can we be
victorious ? I write to you what I dare not say
aloud. I see what is terrible, and yet am not
terrified. But it is well that one should not
venture to say needlessly things calculated to
alarm others, unless those others can administer
the cure.
" The truth is, I have never found in many
men in Washington what I call realizing sense,
practical sagacity, and victorious faith. Numb-
ness, flightiness, selfishness, and all sorts of lit-
tlenesses, not singular in times of general pros-
perity when men are not summoned to be great,
but astounding at a moment when men should
140 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
be giants, and pigmies should be men — .these
strike me always, when I visit Washington, as
the qualities most apparent and the uppermost.
Where is the union of noble spirits? Where
the few noble and unselfish hearts, to be the uni-
versal solvent, melting all others into union ?
Where is the grand good sense, which is the
great trait of every great person in affairs ?
Why ! we can't pay our army even, when money
is cheap and is spent like water! There is
enough of contentious criticism — too much —
but little of the ' pull together ' quality needed
to the very existence of a party, even ; much
more of a people. We have very able men in
Washington. But they have very little idea of
what God made them for, or else He means to
show how much He can do for us without their
aid ! Now, for one, I am bound to be patient.
I think we may even have to suffer great Dem-
ocratic, secession, pro-slavery political defeats ;
that the Republicans may have to be driven out
of power, and the cause of liberty and right have
to win its way back again, in travail of soul;
but all these experiences will pay a recompense
in the end ; will help assure the great hereafter !
We must make up our minds now that we are
6 in for a long storm.' May God help his own
to be faithful to the end ! "
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 141
These causes combined with his unrelaxing
toil to shorten his days. In those five years
of his administration he tasted the cares and
sorrows, the hopes and joys, and concentrated
the labors of a century of ordinary life ; and
such an experience aggravated his tendency to
the disease which at last was fatal. No soldier
struck by a rebel bullet on the battle-field died
more truly a victim to the national cause. For
many years he had known that he was liable to
sudden death. Twice, during the period be-
tween his first election and the end of the war,
he was saved from a fatal issue of attacks sim-
ilar to that from which he died, only by profuse
bleedings which themselves endangered life.
The first time was in December, 1860, shortly
before his inauguration. The second was in
1864, when he had engaged to speak, in behalf
of the reelection of President Lincoln, to mass-
meetings in all the principal towns on the line
of the New York Central Railroad, from Albany
to Buffalo, but was compelled to desist before
completing the route. But this knowledge did
not depress him, nor did it ever induce him to
seek for personal ease or relaxation of toil, at
the cost of others.
4
One great source of consolation and relief he
possessed in a naturally mirthful disposition. It
142 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
was more than cheerful : it was merry. He had
as quick and lively perception of the ludicrous
as President Lincoln himself, and his anecdote
was free from coarseness. Of the Yankee dia-
lect he was a master. He had studied it ana-
lytically, just as he studied the intricacies of the
typical Yankee character. The every-day life
of the country villages of New England, of their
shops, farm-yards, stage-coaches, taverns, sew-
ing-circles, and household firesides, was familiar
to him in all its details, and served him con-
stantly for illustrations of stories which he told
with a hearty enjoyment it excites a smile to re-
member. This mirth was so natural that it
sought and found material for its exercise in all
the affairs of his daily business, serious or trivial ;
but it never betrayed him into levity, nor was it
tinged in the slightest degree with sarcasm, al-
though it was often full of satire. It helped him
greatly to be indifferent to little mishaps and an-
noyances, of which, during his whole adminis-
tration, there was a daily multitude that would
have vexed and perplexed any man of less ani-
mal vigor and buoyant spirit.
He had a good voice and ear for music ; but
all the musical training he ever enjoyed was that
of the village singing-school. It was enough,
however, to encourage him always to join and
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 143
often to take the lead in congregational singing,
and his earnestness always carried him safely-
through the psalm-tunes, and the others with
him. Like all simple and enthusiastic natures,
his was easily stirred by melody. He delighted
in martial music ; and no school-boy ever trained
along through village streets by the side of the
brass-band at the parade of a militia company
with more charmed ear than he. But this taste
was never far cultivated. He had little scientific
acquaintance with the theory of music ; although,
curiously enough, he possessed a minute knowl-
edge of the history of the development of the
piano-forte, of which, through some odd fancy,
he had made a special study. His knowledge
of this and of some other specialties, not con-
nected with his official or professional life, af-
forded him often much amusement bv the sur-
prise they caused. One day, last summer, a
friend was relating to him a curious incident, il-
lustrating the theory of spiritualism, connected
with an old spinnet, still preserved at Paris,
which once belonged to a favorite musician at
the court of Henry III. of France. In explana-
tion of the incident the narrator was exhibiting
some photographs of the instrument, and describ-
ing its construction, when, to his astonishment,
he found that the Governor was even more fa-
144 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
miliar with all the details of it than he was him-
self.
In his address to the medical students, from
which, in this sketch, some quotations have al-
ready been made, speaking from his own expe-
rience, he said : —
" The concurrent pursuit of some department
of learning not in the direct line of your profes-
sional necessity I hold to be wanted for the in-
tegrity and health of your own minds. It calms,
elevates, restores the jaded powers, clears the
intellect, cools the judgment, and raises the
moral tone. It makes life less a drudgery, and
more a liberty and a joy. From morbid anat-
omy; from human physiology which you must
perforce study always in connection with dis-
ease ; from the thought of sick men and mortal-
ity, turn aside for some precious moments every
day, and be devout, happy scholars and freemen
of the universe ! "
His favorite amusement was to drive far out
into the country around Boston with some inti-
mate friend, and at last, when clear of the thick-
ly settled suburbs, leaving the horse to travel
almost at his own will, to abandon himself to a
hilarity than which none could be more simple
and genuine. Driving thus in the fresh spring
air along the beautiful roads of Watertown or
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 145
Newton, fringed and fragrant with apple blossoms,
he would overflow with a spring-tide of anecdote
and humor. But he allowed himself few such
holiday hours. Almost all his excursions from
the city combined an element of business with
what pleasure they afforded. Was it a sleigh-
ride on a clear, crisp, Sunday morning in Jan-
uary ; the object would be to attend the dedi-
cation of a soldiers' chapel at the Readville
Camp, or the services in the chapel of the State
Prison, or to sit for an hour by the bedside of
some invalid soldier. Was it a drive into the
green of the country, in the twilight of a sum-
mer evening ; the horses would not turn their
heads homeward without first stopping at the
State Arsenal in Cambridge, the United States
Arsenal at Watertown, the camps at Brook
Farm or Medford, or the State charitable insti-
tutions at South Boston.
After the first year of the war he was accus-
tomed to travel a good deal through the State in
the summer season, but always on some official
task which robbed him of a great part of the
pleasure of the journey ; and more than half
the time he travelled by night, so as to save the
daylight for business. On these excursions he
would attend the Commencements at Amherst
and Williams Colleges, the Wesleyan Academy,
10
146 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
and the College of the Holy Cross ; inspect the
work on the Hoosac Tunnel ; be present at the
Agricultural Fairs, and the closing of the terms
of the Normal Schools ; examine insane hospi-
tals, alms-houses, jails, and houses of reformation
and correction ; besides visiting the numerous
military camps, at Pittsfield, Greenfield, Spring-
field, Worcester, Groton, Wenham, Lynnfield,
and Lakeville, and the great camp at Readville.
How delightful he made these journeys to oth-
ers, by his shrewd observation, lively wit, unfail-
ing good temper, and ardor for everything that
was charitable or patriotic, the happy recollec-
tions of those who had the privilege of being his
companions will forever attest. As a rule, he
disliked to talk in railroad cars. He was fond
of occupying hours of railway travel with com-
mitting to memory English verses ; and this is
the explanation of his facility of poetical quota-
tion. One summer, in this way, he committed
to memory the whole of Mr. Longfellow's selec-
tion of minor poems, the " Waif." And he used
to employ these hours also with comparing, in his
own mind, his observations of the public institu-
tions under his care, and drawing from them
some wise generalization, which he rarely failed*
at last to apply to some practical purpose.
His administration of the domestic affairs of
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 147
the State was as remarkable as that of its rela-
tions to the Union. The Board of State Char-
ities was instituted, on his recommendation, for
the purpose of effecting uniformity in the or-
ganization, discipline, and expenditures of the
various charitable and reformatory institutions.
The repeal of a constitutional amendment impos-
ing disabilities on adopted citizens was accom-
plished at his instance. The militia laws were
revised and amended. A system for improving
the long neglected but very valuable public
property in the flats which might be redeemed
from the sea, was projected. The policy of
increasing facilities for railroad communication
with the Northwest and the Northeast was dili-
gently fostered.
For all his communications to the Legislature
and his formal addresses to public bodies, he
made elaborate preparation, and freely com-
manded and used the work of others in their
details. Burdened as he was with care, it would
have been impossible for this to be otherwise.
Whether preparing for a professional argument
or an official message, he was fond of laying in
supplies and carefully organizing and drilling his
forces before beginning to move, and then of
moving en masse. At the time he died he had
already begun to prepare a scheme of testimony
148 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
and argument for such an elaborate attack upon
the system of capital punishment, which he was
planning to make before a committee of the
present Legislature.
He had the habit of sending his manuscript to
the printer with the various sheets pasted to-
gether into a long roll like a mammoth petition ;
and he made revisions in the proofs with a free-
dom which drove the compositors to despair.
The handwriting, though bold and flowing, was
far from legible ; and his signature, towards the
end of his official life, became a puzzle to stran-
gers. He made a practice of signing, himself,
almost all the correspondence of his office. One
summer, having (with his usual pains to satisfy
even trivial inquiries) replied, over his own sig-
nature, to the request of a country schoolmis-
tress to be informed, three months in advance,
what day he would appoint for Thanksgiving,
she sent back the letter with a suggestion that
when replying to "a woman," he should write
himself instead of sending the letter of some
secretary whose name she could not read. His
fair correspondent had better cause of complaint
about the day than about the handwriting, for,
that year, the Governor, attracted by the fact
that the third Thursday of November was the
anniversary of the signing of the compact on
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 149
board the Mayflower, designated it for Thanks-
giving ; and the next day after his Proclamation
he received a multitude of indignant letters from
pedagogues, of either sex, all over the State,
whose vacations had been planned upon a pre-
sumed appointment of the last Thursday of the
month, according to a time-honored custom from
which he never afterwards ventured to depart,
for (he used often laughingly to say) that morn-
ing's mail contained more abuse better expressed
than any other he ever received.
His social talk was just like his speech in pub-
lic. His public speeches, at least those made
without preparation, were often effective, for
this very reason, beyond the degree which the
written reports of them seem to justify, if
judged by a rigid standard of classical style.
The natural exuberance of his language and the
heartiness of his manner made him remarkably
successful as an impromptu speaker ; and it will
be hardly possible for those who never knew or
heard him to appreciate the wonderful influence
which he exercised, through this faculty, during
the war.* Hardly a day passed, certainly never
* As an example of this, Lieutenant Colonel Wilder Dwight, of
the Second Massachusetts Regiment, who fell at Antietam, the
Sidney of our Massachusetts youths, once told the writer that he
never went under fire without repeating to himself the words with
which the Governor described to the Legislature the uprising of
150 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
a week passed, during his administration, without
some call for its use, and he never failed to win
and command the audience, whether the occa-
sion was a recruiting meeting, the departure of
a regiment, the anniversary of a college, the
morning exercises of a Sunday-school, the relig-
ious services at a prison, the " love feast " at a
camp-meeting, or the festivities of a dinner-table.
If the test of eloquence is success in exciting
emotion at the will of the speaker, he was,
throughout the war, one of the most eloquent of
men ; but unquestionably a great part of this in-
fluence was due to the events of the time, and
the universal admiration of his public career,
which predisposed every audience to be moved
by his presence. By the critical tests of ora-
tory, one would hesitate to call him a great
orator. He will be ranged with that class of
public speakers of which John Bright is an emi-
nent representative ; and many of the secrets
the country after the fall of Sumter: " The guns pointed at Fort
Sumter on the twelfth day of April, while they reduced the
material edifice and made prisoners of its garrison, announced to
Anderson and his men their introduction into the noble anny of
heroes of American history ; and the cannon of the fort, as they
saluted the American flag when the vanquished garrison — uncon-
querable in heart — retired from the scene, saluted the immortal
Stripes and Stars, flaming out in ten times ten thousand resurrec-
tions of the flag of Sumter, on hill-top, staff and spire, hailed by
the shouts and joyful tears of twenty millions of freemen."
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 151
of the power and charm of the two men were
the same. Some of his addresses, made after
careful preparation, and many of his sayings in
impromptu speeches, will endure as long as the
history of Massachusetts.
His pecuniary means were always small; so
that he was debarred from an extensive exercise
of private hospitality, and less of official business
was associated with his domestic life than is often
the case with men so genial. At the time when
he became Governor his professional practice, ill-
paid through many previous years, had recently
begun to be lucrative. But his term of public
service was so long, and its duties had been so
absorbing, that when he retired from office in
January, 1866, his circle of clients was entirely
broken up, and he felt a reluctance to resume
former professional pursuits, which only the pres-
sure of necessity enabled him to overcome. Be-
sides, he needed rest ; and, had his circumstances
permitted the leisure to enjoy it, his life might
have been spared. But the bar offered the field
in which to earn most surely and honorably the
competency needed for his family. So, declining
a proposal of the presidency of Antioch College, in
Ohio ; and also the offer gracefully made to him
by his successor, Governor Bullock, of a seat on
the bench of the Supreme Court of the State ;
152 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
and declining also a commission from the Federal
Government to go to England and France, to in-
stitute proceedings in behalf of the United States,
in the courts of those countries, to compel the sur-
render of Confederate property, he resumed pro-
fessional life at Boston ; and with such success
that when he died he was gathering its largest
pecuniary rewards as well as its highest honors.
Had he been willing, he might have retired upon
a national office comparatively a sinecure ; but he
reserved himself for more worthy duties. The
office of Collector of Customs of the port of Boston
fell vacant at the end of the war, and an intima-
tion was conveyed to him from the President of
the United States that if he would accept it, the
President would be glad to appoint him ; but he
instantly rejected the suggestion, and the place
was then filled by the appointment of Mr. Ham-
lin, whose term of service as Vice President had
recently expired. Conversing with a friend on
the subject soon afterwards, the Governor re-
marked that it was the most lucrative public
office in the New England States, and as it had
been the habit to intrust it to men who had held
other high official stations and rendered large
public service for inadequate pay, he supposed it
was tendered to him in accordance with that
practice ; " but," added he, " I can accept no
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 153
such place for such a reason. As Governor of
Massachusetts I feel that I have held a sacrificial
office, that I have stood between the horns of the
altar and sprinkled it with the best, blood of this
Commonwealth — a duty so holy that it would
be sacrilege to profane it by any consideration of
pecuniary loss or gain."
Metaphorical language like this, gathered from
the Testaments, was as natural on his lips as if
he were himself an Oriental. Few laymen were
more familiar with the Bible, or had studied it
with a more earnest spirit of devout criticism.
The beautiful interpretation of the miracle of
Cana, which he gave in his argument on the pro-
hibitory liquor law in reply to the version of the
clergyman who had argued the other side of the
question, is a fine illustration of this familiarity,
and of the catholicity of his religious doctrines.
He was always a member of the Unitarian body
of Christians, and for many years was the official
head of its lay organization ; but no man was less
a sectarian in creed or practice. His face was
well known in places of worship of every denom-
ination. His three closest clerical friends were
his Unitarian pastor, a Roman Catholic priest,
and Father Taylor, the Methodist preacher to the
sailors. One Easter morning he had agreed to
go with his secretary to service at a Roman
154 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
Catholic church, and that gentleman, when he
called for him at the appointed hour, received a
hastily written note, stating that he might be
found at the little Quaker meeting-house in Mil-
ton Place, where he had gone to listen to his
dear friend, Mrs. Rachel Howland.
Scores of illustrations of this catholic spirit
might be written but for trespassing upon the
province of his biographer. A faithful biography
of Governor Andrew will be a complete history
of Massachusetts during the civil war ; not alone
of its connection with the war, but of all its do-
mestic affairs, none of which escaped his anxious
care. It has been the only design of the present
writer, while sketching familiarly and affection-
ately, not so much the substance as the manner
of his official life, to show how, even in little
things, he exerted the same strong personal mag-
netism by which he inspired the people of Massa-
chusetts in his greater acts, and how with him
always, in all things, little or great, the spirit was
everything, the letter nothing.
His final term as Governor expired January
5, 1866, five years to a day from the date of his
first inauguration. On December 22, 1865, the
anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims at
Plymouth, the flags of the hundred Massachusetts
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 155
regiments and batteries which he had organized
for the war, were borne through the streets of the
capital of Massachusetts by the veterans who had
survived the conflict, and were delivered to the
hands of the Governor at the State House.
In delivering them, Major-General Couch, the
commander of the column, said : —
" May it please your Excellency : We have
come here to-day as the representatives of the
army of volunteers furnished by Massachusetts
for the suppression of the rebellion, bringing these
colors in order to return them to the State which
intrusted them to our keeping. You must, how-
ever, pardon us if we give them up with profound
regret — for these tattered shreds forcibly remind
us of long and fatiguing marches, cold bivouacs,
and many hard-fought battles. The rents in
their folds, the battle-stains on their escutcheons,
the blood of our comrades that has sanctified the
soil of an hundred fields, attest the sacrifices that
have been made, the courage and constancy
shown, that the nation might live. It is, sir, a
peculiar satisfaction and pleasure to us that you,
who have been an honor to the State and Nation,
from your marked patriotism and fidelity through-
out the war, and have been identified with every
organization before you, are now here to receive
156 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
back, as the State custodian of her precious relics,
these emblems of the devotion of her sons. May-
it please your Excellency, the colors of the Mas-
sachusetts Volunteers are returned to the State."
The Governor replied : —
" General : This pageant, so full of pathos and
of glory, forms the concluding scene in the long
series of visible actions and events in which Mas-
sachusetts has borne a part, for the overthrow of
rebellion and the vindication of the Union.
" These banners return to the Government of
the Commonwealth through welcome hands.
Borne, one by one, out of this Capitol, during
more than four years of civil war, as the symbols
of the Nation and the Commonwealth, under
which the battalions of Massachusetts departed to
the field, — they come back again, borne hither
by surviving representatives of the same heroic
regiments and companies to which they were in-
trusted.
" At the hands, General, of yourself — the rank-
ing officer of the Volunteers of the Commonwealth
(one of the earliest who accepted a regimental
command under appointment of the Governor of
Massachusetts) — and of this grand column of
scarred and heroic veterans who guard them
home, they are returned with honors becoming
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 157
relics so venerable, soldiers so brave, and citizens
so beloved.
" Proud memories of many a field ; sweet mem-
ories alike of valor and friendship ; sad memories
of fraternal strife ; tender memories of our fallen
brothers and sons, whose dying eyes looked last
upon their flaming folds ; grand memories of
heroic virtues sublimed by grief; exultant mem-
ories of the great and final victory of our Country,
our Union, and the Righteous Cause ; thankful
memories of a deliverance wrought out for human
nature itself, unexampled Jby any former achieve-
ment of arms — immortal memories with immor-
tal honors blended, twine around these splintered
staves, weave themselves along the warp and
woof of these familiar flags, war-worn, begrimed,
and baptized with blood. Let ' the brave heart,
the trusty heart, the deep, unfathomable heart,'
in words of more than mortal eloquence, uttered
though unexpressed, speak the emotions of grate-
ful veneration for which these lips of mine are
alike too feeble and unworthy.
" General : I accept these relics in behalf of
the People and the Government. They will be
preserved and cherished, amid all the vicissitudes
of the future, as mementoes of brave men and
noble actions."
158 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
CHAPTER X.
Valedictory address. — Description of the occasion. — He opposes
political proscription, whether of white or of black men. — He is
not in accord with either President or Congress. — Course of
public temper comes to correspond with his opinions. — Expec-
tations of his connection with the next Federal Administration.
— His natural capacity for leadership. — His estimate of the
character of President Lincoln. — Comparison of his own char-
acter with that estimate.
One more duty performed, his official career
was complete. Retiring from office, he deliv-
ered to the Legislature that valedictory address
on which, more than on any other production of
his pen, rests his claim to the fame of a great
statesman. Mr. James Freeman Clarke, de-
scribing the scene, says : " Who that was pres-
ent can forget that last day in office ? He in-
vited to his rooms a large number of his friends
to go in with him and hear it. There you saw
together a memorable company. There were
men and women of all ages, from Levi Lincoln,
then eighty-four years of age, to little boys and
girls. Side by side were old abolitionists and
old conservatives, orthodox men and radicals, —
those who had never met before in one room in
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 159
their lives. It seemed like the scene which will
be witnessed at the Resurrection of the Just.
It was on this occasion that he showed himself to
be, not the fanatic he was believed to be by the
Southerners, but their best friend. And it was
at this time that he used the expression that hav-
ing formerly urged a vigorous prosecution of the
war, he should now insist on a 4 vigorous prose-
cution of peace.' "
First, he enumerated the contributions of
Massachusetts to the national cause — 159,165
soldiers and sailors in the Federal armies or na-
vies, besides $27,705,109 appropriated from the
treasury of the Commonwealth, in addition to
the expenditures of the cities and towns. Then,
asserting the right of Massachusetts to an influ-
ential voice in the determination of the great
questions of national statesmanship raised by the
issue of a war won by such sacrifices, he argued
at length the terms of pacification which Massa-
chusetts should advocate. In his view, we could
not reorganize political society in the Rebel
States, with any proper security, unless, first,
" we let in the people to a cooperation, and not
merely an arbitrarily selected portion of them ; "
nor unless, second, " we give those who are by
their intelligence and character the natural lead-
ers of the people, and who surely will lead them
160 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
by and by, an opportunity to lead them now."
And he advocated the policy of settling the
question of suffrage, so far as regards the voting
for President, Vice President, and Representa-
tives in Congress, by an amendment of the
Federal Constitution, and, so far as regards
the popular choice of all other officers in the
Rebel States, by provisions of their State Con-
stitutions, of general application, instead of leav-
ing the subject to the shifting and inconsistent
ordinary legislation of the States severally. To
the question so often asked during the two years
after Governor Andrew retired from public life,
Did he agree with Congress or with the Presi-
dent, in the strife which raged between them?
these propositions render a clear reply. The
action of neither was satisfactory to him ; and he
awaited patiently, in private life, the day when
experience should vindicate the position he was
so early to discern and so intrepid to assume.
That the course of the public temper is now
in accord with his views, and that their indorse-
ment by the people at the next election of Pres-
ident would have summoned him from his retire-
ment to adorn and ennoble a national office of
next to the highest honor, is a common assertion
since his death. That Massachusetts, in losing
him, lost that one of her citizens whose ties of
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 161
sympathy with public men of other sections of the
Union were more nearly universal than those of
any other, is a fact quite as generally recognized.
He was, by nature, a leader of men. There
are characters whose combination of qualities,
though so admirable and harmonious that their
fame is well assured, yet are not sources of
enthusiasm to the ordinary mass of mankind.
Such a character George Washington has be-
come in history ; like Tennyson's description of
the face of Maud, " faultily faultless ; dead per-
fection, no more." None such was Governor
Andrew. And there are other admirable histori-
cal characters, not so far removed from ordinary
mankind as to be exalted above the plane of
human sympathy, but whose great acts, which
will influence countless generations, were com-
pelled rather than original, forced upon them in
the march of events rather than shaped by noble
impulses of their own minds. Such a character
was Abraham Lincoln. But Governor Andrew
was of a different sort.
It is interesting to-day to turn back to his
estimate of Lincoln as expressed in the address
in which he communicated to the Massachusetts
Legislature the tidings of the assassination of
the President.* After describing him as the
* The last official communication from Governor Andrew to Pres-
11
162 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
man " on whom the people hung with ' fonder
hope and confidence than had ever been exer-
cised within the memory of the generation to
which we belong," and who had added "mar-
tyrdom itself to his other and scarcely less em-
phatic claims to human veneration, gratitude, and
love ; " and after alluding to the closeness of
their personal and official relations, the Gov-
ernor analyzed Lincoln's character thus : —
" I desire on this grave occasion to record my
sincere testimony to the unaffected simplicity of
his manly purpose, to the constancy with which
he devoted himself to his duty, to the grand
fidelity with which he subordinated himself to
his country, to the clearness, robustness, and
sagacity of his understanding, to his sincere love
of truth, his undeviating progress in its faithful
pursuit, and to the confidence which he could
not fail to inspire in the singular integrity of his
virtues and the conspicuously judicial quality of
his intellect.
" He had the rare gift of discerning and setting
aside whatever is extraneous and accidental, and
ident Lincoln was a telegram, dated at Boston, April 11, 1865,
urging the President to proclaim a National Thanksgiving for the
capture of Richmond and the final victory of Grant, and suggesting
April 19, the anniversary of Lexington and Baltimore, as an ap-
propriate day. But on April 19 the Governor was attending the
funeral ceremonies for the President in the East Room of the
White House at Washington.
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 163
of simplifying an inquiry or an argument by just
discriminations. The purpose of his mind waited
for the instruction of his deliberate judgment;
and he was never ashamed to hesitate until he
was sure that it was intelligently formed. Not
greatly gifted in what is called the intuition of
reason, he was nevertheless of so honest an intel-
lect that by the processes of methodical reasoning
he was often led so directly to his result that he
occasionally seemed to rise into that peculiar
sphere which we assign to those who, by original
constitution, are natural leaders among men."
And, after completing this analysis, and " chal-
lenging all human history to produce the name
of a ruler more just, unselfish, or unresentful than
Abraham Lincoln," the Governor continued : —
" It were premature for us to assert how, or
how far, during the four years of his administra-
tion, he led this American People. The unfold-
ing of events in the history we are yet to enact
will alone determine the limits of such influence.
It is enough for his immortal glory that he faith-
fully represented this people, their confidence in
democratic government, their constancy in the
hour of adversity, and their magnanimity in the
hour of triumph."
" Comparing his declarations of purpose and
of inclination with the great actions of his ca-
164 SKETCH OF THE OFFICIAL LIFE
reer, we recognize how that career was shaped
by external more than by internal forces. Until
long after his inauguration he never proposed
or counted upon war. He proposed only to
hold, occupy, and possess the places and the
property which were within the exclusive juris-
diction of the United States. And yet he waged
to a successful issue a civil war the most tre-
mendous which history records. Nor had he
ever proposed or inclined to interfere with sla-
very in the States. He proposed only to check
its spread and suppress its existence in places
within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal
Union. And yet he proclaimed liberty to three
millions of American slaves, and prepared the
way for Universal Emancipation.
" Without disparagement, then, of his loftiness
of motive and fullness of achievement, and with-
out detraction from the measure of his glory,
may we not recognize in his career a Direction
Supreme above the devices or conceptions of
man, and seeing thus how a Divine Hand has
led us through these paths of trial, yield con-
fidingly to its guidance in all future years."
Reviewing the career of Governor Andrew
himself, may we not ascribe to him all the posi-
tive noble qualities with which his judgment
thus invested President Lincoln, and that inde-
OF GOVERNOR ANDREW. 165
finable something more, which he calls the
" intuition of reason," but let us call " inspira-
tion ; " which is not shaped by the present, but
is of and for all time, and itself shapes the
future. Comparing his declarations of purpose
with the great actions of his administration, do
we not recognize that his career was controlled
from within, not from without; and that the
good he did was good he planned ?
Premature as seems his death, yet he lived
long enough to leave a fame as enduring as shall
be the Commonwealth he governed. Of all his
illustrious predecessors no one achieved more
" to form a more perfect Union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the com-
mon defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and
our posterity." He made the first preparations
for the war and received at its close the trium-
phant standards of the army he organized to
wage it. " He ordered the overcoats, and he
received the flags ! " Every Massachusetts man
knows the glorious history comprised in that
brief sentence. Of his departure after such toil
and such success one well may use the verses of
the Samson Agonistes, those favorite verses
which he himself selected for the inscription on
166 SKETCH OF GOVERNOR ANDREW.
the monument at Lowell of the first martyrs of
•/
the war : —
" He to Israel
Honor hath left, and freedom, let but them
Find courage to lay hold on this occasion ;
To himself and father's house eternal fame ;
And, which is best and happiest yet, all this
With God not parted from him, ....
But favoring and assisting to the end.
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt
Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble."
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS
OF
HIS EXCELLENCY JOHN A. ANDREW,
TO THE
TWO BRANCHES OF THE LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHUSETTS,
UPON RETIRING FROM THE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR
OF THE COMMONWEALTH, JANUARY 5, 1866.
Gentlemen of the Senate
and the House of Representatives : —
The People of Massachusetts have vindicated
alike their intelligence, their patriotism, their
will, and their power ; both in the cultivation of
the arts of Peace, and in the prosecution of just
and unavoidable War. At the end of five
years of executive administration, I appear be-
fore a convention of the two Houses of her
General Court, in the execution of a final duty.
For nearly all that period, the Commonwealth,
as a loyal State of the American Union, has
been occupied, within her sphere of cooperation,
in helping to maintain, by arms, the power of
the nation, the liberties of the people, and the
168 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
rights of human nature. Having contributed to
the Army and the Navy — including regulars,
volunteers, seamen and marines, men of all arms
and officers of all grades, of the various terms
of service — an aggregate of one hundred and
fifty-nine thousand one hundred and sixty-five
men ; and having expended for the war, out of
her own treasury, twenty-seven million seven
hundred and five thousand one hundred and nine
dollars, besides the expenditures of her cities and
towns, she has maintained, by the unfailing en-
ergy and economy of her sons and daughters,
her industry and thrift, even in the waste of
war. She has paid promptly, and in gold, all
interest on her bonds, including the old and the
new, guarding her faith and honor with every
public creditor, while still fighting the public
enemy ; and now, at last, in retiring from her
service, I confess the satisfaction of having first
seen all of her regiments and batteries, save two
battalions, returned and mustered out of the
Army; and of leaving her treasury provided
for, by the fortunate and profitable negotiation
of all the permanent loan needed or foreseen ;
with her financial credit maintained at home and
abroad, her public securities unsurpassed, if
even equaled, in value in the money markets of
the world, by those of any State or of the Nation.
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 169
I have already had the honor to lay before the
General Court, by special message to the Sen-
ate, a statement of all affairs which demand my
own official communication ; and it only remains
for me to transfer, at the appropriate moment,
the cares, the honors, and the responsibilities of
office, to the hands of that eminent and patriotic
citizen on whose public experience and ability
the Commonwealth so justly relies.* But, per-
haps, before descending, for the last time, from
this venerable seat, I may be indulged in some
allusion to the broad field of thought and states-
manship to which the war itself has conducted
us. As I leave the Temple where, humbled by
my unworthiness, I have stood so long, like a
priest of Israel sprinkling the blood of the holy
sacrifice on the altar, I would fain contemplate
the solemn and manly duties which remain to us
who survive the slain, in honor of their memorv
4/
and in obedience to God.
The Nation, having been ousted by armed Re-
bellion of its just possession, and of the exercise
of its constitutional jurisdiction over the territory
of the Rebel States, has now at last, by the sup-
pression of the Rebellion (accomplished by the
victories of the national arms over those of the
* His Excellency, Alexander H. Bullock, the present Governor of
the Commonwealth.
170 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
rebels), regained possession and restored its own
rightful sway. The Rebels had overthrown the
loyal State governments. They had made war
against the Union. The government of each
Rebel State had not only withdrawn its alle-
giance, but had given in its adhesion to another,
namely, the Confederate Government — a gov-
ernment not only injurious by its very creation,
but hostile to, and in arms against, the Union,
asserting and exercising belligerent rights, both
on land and sea, and seeking alliances with for-
eign nations, even demanding the armed inter-
vention of neutral powers.
The pretensions of this " Confederacy " were
maintained for four years, in one of the most
extensive, persistent, and bloody wars of History.
To overcome it and maintain the rights and the
verv existence of the Union, our National Gov-
ernment was compelled to keep on foot one of
the most stupendous military establishments the
world has ever known ; and probably the same
amount of force, naval and military, was never
organized and involved in any national contro-
versy.
On both sides there was War, with all its in-
cidents, all its claims, its rights, and its results.
The States in rebellion tried, under the lead
of their new Confederacy, to conquer the Union ;
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 171
but in the attempt they were themselves con-
quered.
They did not revert by their rebellion, nor by
our conquest, into " Territories." They did not
commit suicide. But they rebelled ; they went
to war ; and they were conquered.
A " Territory " of the United States is a pos-
session, or dependency, of the United States,
having none of the distinctive, constitutional at-
tributes of a State. A Territory might be in
rebellion ; but not thereby cease to be a Terri-
tory. It would be properly described as a Ter-
ritory in rebellion.
Neither does a State in rebellion cease to be a
State. It would be correctly described as a
State in rebellion. And it would be subject to
the proper consequences of rebellion, — both
direct and incidental, — among which may be
that of military government, or supervision, by
the Nation, determinable only by the Nation, at
its own just discretion, in the due exercise of
the rights of war. The power to put an end to
its life is not an attribute of a State of our
Union. Nor can the Union put an end to its
own life, save by an alteration of the National
Constitution, or by suffering such defeat in war
as to bring it under the jurisdiction of a con-
queror. The Nation has a vested interest in
172 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
the life of the individual State. The States
have a vested interest in the life of the Union.
I do not perceive, therefore, how a State has the
power by its own action alone, without the coop-
eration of the Union, to destroy the continuity
of its corporate life. Nor do I perceive how
the National Union can, by its own action, with-
out the action or omission of the States, destroy
the continuity of its own corporate life. It
seems to me that the stream of life flows through
both State and Nation from a double source;
which is a distinguishing element of its vital
power. Eccentricity of motion is not death;
nor is abnormal action organic change.
The position of the Rebel States is fixed by
the Constitution, and by the laws, or rights, of
war. If they had conquered the Union, they
might have become independent, or whatever
else it might have been stipulated that they
should become, by the terms of an ultimate
treaty of peace. But, being conquered, they
failed in becoming independent, and they failed
in accomplishing anything but their own con-
quest. They were still States ; though belliger-
ents conquered. But they had lost their loyal
organization as States ; lost their present posses-
sion of their political and representative power
in the Union. Under the Constitution they
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 173
have no means or power of their own to regain
it. But the exigency is provided for by that
clause in the Federal Constitution in which the
Federal Government guarantees a republican
form of government to every State. The regu-
lar and formal method would be, therefore, for
the National Government to provide specifically
for their reorganization.
The right and duty, however, of the General
Government, under the circumstances of their
present case, is not the single one of reorganiz-
ing these disorganized States. The war imposed
rights and duties, peculiar to itself and to the
relations and the results of War. The first duty
of the Nation is to regain its own power. It has
already made a great advance in the direction of
its power. If ours were a despotic government,
it might even now be thought that it had already
accomplished the re establishment of its power as
a government. But, ours being a republican and
a popular government, it cannot be affirmed that
the proper power of the government is restored,
until a peaceful, loyal, and faithful state of mind
gains a sufficient ascendency in the rebel and
belligerent States, to enable the Union and loyal
citizens everywhere to repose alike on the pur-
pose and the ability of their people, in point of
numbers and capacity, to assert, maintain, and
174 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
conduct State governments, republican in form,
loyal in sentiment and character, with safety to
themselves and to the national whole. If the
people, or too large a portion of the people, of a
given Rebel State, are not willing and able to do
this, then the state of war still exists, or, at least,
a condition consequent upon and incidental there-
to exists, which only the exercise on our part of
belligerent rights, or some of their incidents, can
meet or can cure. The rights of war must con-
tinue until the objects of the war have been ac-
complished, and the Nation recognizes the return
of a state of peace. It is absolutely necessary
then for the Union Government to prescribe some
reasonable test of loyalty to the people of the
States in rebellion. It is necessary to require
of them conformity to those arrangements which
the war has rendered, or proved to be, necessary
to the public peace, and necessary as securities
for the future. As the conquering party, the
National Government has the right to govern
these belligerent States meanwhile, at its own
wise and conscientious discretion, subject: First.
To the demands of natural justice, humanity, and
the usages of civilized nations ; Second. To its
duty under the Constitution, to guarantee repub-
lican governments to the States.
But there is no arbiter, save the People of the
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 175
United States, between the Government of the
Union and those States. Therefore the precise
things to be done, the precise way to do them,
the precise steps to be taken, their order, progress
and direction, are all within the discretion of the
National Government, in the exercise, both of its
belligerent and its more strictly constitutional
functions — exercising them according to its own
wise, prudent, and just discretion. Its duty is
not only to restore those States, but also to make
sure of a lasting peace, of its own ultimate safety,
and the permanent establishment of the rights of
all its subjects. To this end, I venture the
opinion that the Government of the United
States ought to require the people of those States
to reform their Constitutions, —
First. Guaranteeing to the people of color,
now the wards of the Nation, their civil rights as
men and women, on an equality with the white
population, by amendments irrepealable in terms.
Second. Regulating the elective franchise ac-
cording to certain laws of universal application,
and not by rules merely arbitrary, capricious,
and personal.
Third. Annulling the ordinances of secession.
Fourth. Disaffirming the Rebel Debt, and —
Fifth. To ratify the anti-slavery amendment
of the United States Constitution by their legisla-
tures.
176 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
And I would have all these questions, save the
fifth — the disposition of which is regulated by
the Federal Constitution — put to the vote of the
People themselves. We should neither be satis-
fied with the action of the conventions which
have been held, nor with what is termed the
" loyal vote." We want the popular vote. And
the rebel vote is better than the loyal vote, if on
the right side. If it is not on the right side,
then, I fear, those States are incapable at present
of reorganization ; the proper power of the
Union Government is not restored ; the people
of those States are not yet prepared to assume
their original functions with safety to the Union ;
and the state of war still exists ; for they are
contumacious and disobedient to the just demands
of the Union, disowning the just conditions pre-
cedent to reorganization.
We are desirous of their reorganization, and
to end the use of the war power. But I am con-
fident we cannot reorganize political society
with any proper security : First Unless we let
in the people to a cooperation, and not merely
an arbitrarily selected portion of them ; Second.
Unless we give those who are, by their intelli-
gence and character, the natural leaders of the
people, and who surely will lead them by and by,
an opportunity to lead them now.
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 177
I am aware that it has been a favorite dogma
in many quarters, "No Rebel Voters" But it
is impossible in certain States to have any voting
by white men, if only " loyal men " — i. e., those
who continued so during the rebellion — are
permitted to vote. This proposition is so clear
that the President adopted the expedient of as-
suming that those who had not risen above cer-
tain civil or military grades in the rebel public
service, and who had neither inherited nor earned
more than a certain amount of property, should
be deemed and taken to be sufficientlv harmless to
be intrusted with the suffrage in the work of re-
organization. Although there is some reason for
assuming that the less conspicuous and less
wealthy classes of men had less to do than their
more towering neighbors in conducting the States
into the Rebellion and through it, still I do not
imagine that either wealth or conspicuous posi-
tion, which are only the accidents of men, or, at
most, only external incidents, affect the substance
of their characters. I think that the poorer and
less significant men who voted, or fought, for
" Southern Independence " had quite as little
love for " the Yankees," quite as much prejudice
against " the Abolitionists," quite as much con-
tempt for the colored man, and quite as much
disloyalty at heart, as their more powerful neigh-
12
178 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
bors. The true question is, now, not of past
disloyalty, but of present loyal purpose. We
need not try to disguise the fact that we have
passed through a great popular Revolution.
Everybody in the Rebel States was disloyal,
with exceptions too few and too far between to
comprise a loyal force sufficient to constitute the
State even now that the armies of the Rebellion
are overthrown. Do not let us deceive ourselves.
The truth is, the public opinion of the white race
in the South was in favor of the rebellion. The
colored people sympathized with the Union cause.
To the extent of their intelligence, they under-
stood that the success of the South meant their
continued slavery ; that an easy success of the
North meant leaving slavery just where we
found it ; that the War meant — if it lasted long
enough — their emancipation. The whites went
to war and supported the war, because they
hoped to succeed in it ; since they wanted, or
thought they wanted, separation from the Union,
or " Southern Independence." There were,
then, three great interests. There were the
Southern whites, who, as a body, wished for what
they called " Southern Independence ; " the
Southern blacks, who desired emancipation ; the
people of the " loyal States," who desired to
maintain the constitutional rights and the territo-
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 179
rial integrity of the Nation. Some of us in the
North had a strong hope, which, by the favor of
God, has not been disappointed, out of our defense
of the Union to accomplish the deliverance of our
fellow-men in bondage. But the " loyal " idea
included emancipation, not for its own sake, but
for the sake of the Union — if the Union could
be saved, or served, by it. There were many men
in the South — besides those known as loyal —
who did not like to incur the responsibility of war
against the Union ; or who did not think that the
opportune moment had arrived to fight " the
North ; " or in whose hearts there was "a di-
vided allegiance." But they were not the posi-
tive men. They were, with very few exceptions,
not the leading minds, the courageous men, the
impressive and powerful characters ; they were
not the young and active men ; and when the
decisive hour came, they went to the wall. No
matter what they thought, or how they felt, about
it ; they could not stand or they would not stand
— certainly they did not stand — against the
storm. The Revolution either converted them,
or swept them off their feet. Their own sons
volunteered. They became involved in all the
work and in all the consequences of the war.
The Southern People — as a People — fought,
toiled, endured, and persevered, with a courage,
180 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
a unanimity and a persistency not outdone by any
people in any Revolution. There was never an
acre of territory abandoned to the Union while
it could be held bv arms. There was never a
rebel regiment surrendered to the Union arms
until resistance was overcome by force, or a sur-
render was compelled by the stress of battle or
of military strategy. The people of the South,
men and women, soldiers and civilians, volun-
teers and conscripts, in the army and at home,
followed the fortunes of the Rebellion and obeyed
its leaders, so long as it had any fortunes or any
leaders. Their young men marched up to the
cannon's mouth, a thousand times, where they
were mowed dow r n like grain by the reapers when
the harvest is ripe. Some men had the faculty
and the faith in the Rebel cause, to become its
leaders. The others had the faculty and the
faith to follow them. All honor to the loyal few !
But I do not regard the distinction between loyal
and disloyal persons of the white race residing
in the South during the rebellion, as being, for
present purposes, a practical distinction. It is
even doubtful whether the comparatively loyal
few, with certain prominent and honorable excep-
tions, can be well discriminated from the disloyal
mass. And, since the President finds himself
obliged to let in the great mass of the disloyal,
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 181
by the very terms of his proclamation of amnesty,
to a participation in the business of reorganizing
the Rebel States, I am obliged also to confess
that I think to make one rule for the richer and
higher rebels, and another rule for the poorer and
more lowly rebels, is impolitic and unphilosophi-
cal. I find evidence, in the granting of pardons,
that such also is the opinion of the President.
When the day arrives, which must surely
come, when an amnesty substantially universal
shall be proclaimed, the leading minds of the
South, who by temporary policy and artificial
rules had been, for the while, disfranchised, will
resume their influence and their sway. The
capacity of leadership is a gift, not a device.
They whose courage, talents, and will, entitle
them to lead, will lead. And these men, not
then estopped by their own consent or partici-
pation, in the business of reorganization, may
not be slow to question the validity of great pufe
lie transactions enacted during their own dis-
franchisement. If it is asked, in reply, " What
can they do ? " and " What can come of their
discontent ? " I answer, that while I do not
know just what they can do, nor what may come
of it, neither do I know what they may not at-
tempt, nor what they may not accomplish. I
only know that we ought to demand, and to
182 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
secure, the cooperation of the strongest and
ablest minds and natural leaders of opinion in
the South. If we cannot gain their support of
the just measures needful for the work of safe
reorganization, reorganization will be delusive and
full of danger.
Why not try them? They are the most
hopeful subjects to deal with, in the very nature
of the case. They have the brain and the expe-
rience and the education to enable them to un-
derstand the exigencies of the present situation.
They have the courage, as well as the skill, to
lead the people in the direction their judgments
point, in spite of their own and the popular
prejudice. Weaker men, those of less experi-
ence, who have less hold on the public confi-
dence, are comparatively powerless. Is it con-
sistent with reason and our knowledge of human
nature, to believe the masses of Southern men
able to face about, to turn their backs on those
they have trusted and followed, and to adopt the
lead of those who have no magnetic hold on their
hearts or minds ? Reorganization in the South
demands the aid of men of great moral courage,
who can renounce their own past opinions, and
do it boldly ; who can comprehend what the
work is, and what are the logical consequences
of the new situation : men who have interests
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 183
urging them to rise to the height of the occasion.
They are not the strong men, from whom weak,
vacillating counsels come ; nor are they the great
men, from whom come counsels born of preju-
dices and follies, having their root in an institu-
tion they know to be dead, and buried beyond
the hope of resurrection.
Has it never occurred to us all, that we are
now proposing the most wonderful and unprece-
dented of human transactions ? The conquering
government, at the close of a great war, is about
restoring to the conquered rebels not only their
local governments in the States, but their rep-
resentative share in the General Government of
the country ! They are, in their States, to
govern themselves as they did before the rebel-
lion. The conquered rebels are, in the Union,
to help govern and control the conquering loyal-
ists ! These being the privileges which they
are to enjoy when reorganization becomes com-
plete, I declare that I know not any safeguard,
precaution, or act of prudence, which wise states-
manship might not recognize to be reasonable
and just. If we have no right to demand guar-
antees for the future ; if we have no right to
insist upon significant acts of loyal submission
from the rebel leaders themselves ; if we have no
right to demand the positive popular vote in
184 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
favor of the guarantees we need ; if we may not
stipulate for the recognition of the just rights of
the slaves, whom, in the act of suppressing the
rebellion, we converted from slaves into freemen,
then I declare that we had no right to emanci-
pate the slaves, or to suppress the rebellion.
It may be asked : Why not demand the suf-
frage for colored men, in season for their vote in
the business of reorganization ? My answer is,
I assume that the colored men are in favor of
those measures which the Union needs to have
adopted. But it would be idle to reorganize
those States by the colored vote. If the popular
vote of the white race is not to be had in favor
of the guarantees justly required, then I am in
favor of holding on just where we now are. I
am not in favor of a surrender of the present
rights of the Union to a struggle between a
white minority aided by the freedmen on the one
hand, against a majority of the white race on the
other. I would not consent, having rescued
those States by arms from secession and rebel-
lion, to turn them over to anarchy and chaos.
I have, however, no doubt, none whatever, of
our right to stipulate for colored suffrage. The
question is one of statesmanship, not a question
of constitutional limitation.
If it is urged that the suffrage question is one
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 185
peculiarly for the States, I reply : So also that
of the abolition of slavery ordinarily would have
been. But we are not now deciding what a
loyal State, acting in its constitutional sphere,
and in its normal relations to the Union, may
do; but what a rebel, belligerent, conquered
State must do, in order to* be reorganized and
to get back into those relations. And in decid-
ing this, I must repeat that we are to be gov-
erned only by justice, humanity, the public
safety, and our duty to reorganize those con-
quered, belligerent States, as we can and when
we can, consistently therewith.
In dealing with those States, with a view to
fulfilling the national guarantee of a republican
form of government, it is plain, since the nation
is called upon to reorganize government, where
no loyal republican State Government is in ex-
istence, that it must, of absolute necessity, deal
directly with the People themselves. If a State
Government were menaced and in danger of
subversion, then the Nation would be called upon
to aid the existing government of the State in
sustaining itself against the impending danger.
But the present case is a different one. The
State Government was subverted in each Rebel
State more than four years ago. The State, in
its corporate capacity, went into rebellion, and,
186 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
as long as it had the power, waged and main-
tained against the Nation rebellious war. There
is no Government in them to deal w T ith. But
there are the People. It is to the people we
must go. It is through their people alone, and
it is in their primary capacity alone, as people
unorganized and without a government, that the
Nation is capable now of dealing with them at
all. And, therefore, the Government of the
Nation is obliged, by the sheer necessity of the
case, to know who are the people of the State,
in the sense of the National Constitution, in or-
der to know how to reach them. Congress, dis-
cerning new people, with new rights and new
duties and new interests (of the nation itself
even) springing from them, may rightfully stip-
ulate in their behalf. If Congress perceives
that it cannot fulfill its guarantee to all the people
of a State, without such a stipulation, then it
not only may, but it ought to, require and secure
it. The guarantee is one concerning all, not
merely a part of the People. And, though the
Government of a State might be of republican
form, and yet not enfranchise its colored citizens ;
still the substance and equity of the guarantee
would be violated, if, in addition to their non-
enfranchisement, the colored people should be
compelled to share the burdens of a State Gov-
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 187
ernment, the benefits of which would enure to
other classes, to their own exclusion.
A republican form of government is not of
necessity just and good. Nor is another form,
of necessity, unjust and bad. A monarch may
be humane, thoughtful, and just to every class
and to every man. A republic may be inhu-
man, regardless of, and unjust to, some of its
subjects. Our National Government and most
of the State Governments were so, to those
whom they treated as slaves, or whose servitude
they aggravated by their legislation in the inter-
est of slavery. The Nation cannot hereafter
pretend that it has kept its promise and fulfilled
its guarantee, when it shall have only organized
governments of republican form, unless it can
look all the people in the face, and declare that it
has kept its promise with them all. The voting
class alone — those who possessed the franchise
under the State Constitutions — were not the
People. They never were the People. They
are not now. They were simply the trustees
of a certain power, for the benefit of all the peo-
ple, and not merely for their own advantage.
The Nation does not fulfill its guarantee by deal-
ing with them alone. It may deal through
them, with the people. It may accept their ac-
tion as satisfactory, in its discretion. But, no
188 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
matter who may be the agents, through whom
the Nation reaches and deals with the people,
that guaranty of the National Constitution is
fatally violated, unless the nation secures to all
the people of those disorganized States the sub-
stantial benefits and advantages of a Govern-
ment. We cannot hide behind a word. We
cannot be content with the "form" The sub-
stance bargained for is a Government. The
" form " is also bargained for, but that is only
an incident. The people, and all the people alike,
must have and enjoy the benefits and advantages
of a government, for the common good, the just
and equal protection of each and all.
But, What of the policy of the President ?
I am not able to consider his future policy. It
is undisclosed. He seems to me to have left to
Congress alone the questions controlling the
conditions on which the Rebel States shall resume
their representative power in the Federal Gov-
ernment. It was not incumbent on the Presi-
dent to do otherwise. He naturally leaves the
duty of theoretical reasoning to those whose re-
sponsibility it is to reach the just practical con-
clusion. Thus far the President has simply
used, according to his proper discretion, the
power of commander-in-chief. What method he
should observe was a question of discretion, in
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 189
the absence of any positive law, to be answered
by himself. He might have assumed, in the ab-
sence of positive law — during the process of
reorganization — purely military methods. Had
that been needful, it would have been appro-
priate. If not necessary, then it would have
been unjust and injurious. It is not just to
oppress even an enemy, merely because we
have the power. In a case like the present, it
would be extremely impolitic, and injurious to
the nation itself. Bear in mind, ours is not a
conquest by barbarians, nor by despots ; but by
Christians and republicans. The commander-in-
chief was bound to govern with a view to pro-
moting the true restoration of the power of the
Union, as I attempted to describe it in the be-
ginning of this address ; not merely with a view
to the present, immediate control of the daily
conduct of the people. He deemed it wise,
therefore, to resort to the democratic principle,
to use the analogies of republicanism and of con-
stitutional liberty. He had the power to govern
through magistrates under military or under
civil titles. He could employ the agencies of
popular and of representative assemblies. Their
authority has its source, however, in his own
war powers as commander-in-chief. If the
peace of society, the rights of the government,
190 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
and of all its subjects, are duly maintained, then
the method may justify itself by its success as
well as its intention. If he has assisted the
people to reorganize their legislatures, and to
reestablish the machinery of local State govern-
ment ; though his method may be less regular
than if an Act of Congress had prescribed it,
still it has permitted the people to feel their way
back into the works and ways of loyalty, to ex-
hibit their temper of mind, and to " show their
hands." Was it not better for the cause of free
government, of civil liberty, to incur the risk of
error in that direction, than of error in the oppo-
site one ? It has proved that the National Gov-
ernment is not drunk with power ; that its four
years' exercise of the dangerous rights of war
has not affected its brain. It has shown that the
danger of despotic centralism, or of central
despotism, is safely over.
Meanwhile, notwithstanding the transmission
of the seals to State magistrates chosen by vote
in the States themselves ; notwithstanding the
inauguration, in fact, of local legislatures, the
powers of war remain. The commander-in-chief
has not abdicated. His generals continue in the
field. They still exercise military functions, ac-
cording to the belligerent rights of the nation.
What the commander-in-chief may hereafter do,
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 191
whether less or more, depends, I presume, in
great measure on what the people of the Rebel
States may do or forbear doing. I assume that,
until the executive and legislative departments of
the National Government shall have reached the
united conclusion that the objects of the war have
been fully accomplished, the national declaration
of peace is not and cannot be made.
The proceedings already had are only certain
acts in the great drama of reorganization. They
do not go for nothing ; they were not unneces-
sary; nor do I approach them with criticism.
But they are not the whole drama. Other acts
are required for its completion. What they shall
be, depends in part on the wisdom of Congress to
determine.
The doctrine of the President that, in the steps
preliminary to reorganizing a State which is
not, and has not been, theoretically cut off from
the Union, he must recognize its own organic law
antecedent to the rebellion, need not be contested.
I adhere, quite as strictly as he, to the logical
consequences of that doctrine. I agree that the
Rebel States ought to come back again into the
exercise of their State functions and the enjoy-
ment of their representative power, by the action
and by the votes of the same class of persons,
namely, the same body of voters, or tenants of
192 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
political rights and privileges, by the votes, action
or submission of whom those States were carried
into the Rebellion. But yet it may be, at the
same time, needful and proper, in the sense of
wise statesmanship, to require of them the ampli-
fication of certain privileges, the recognition of
certain rights, the establishment of certain insti-
tutions, the redistribution even of political power,
— to be by them accorded and executed through
constitutional amendments, or otherwise, — as
elements of acceptable reorganization, and as
necessary to the readjustment of political society
in harmony with the new relations and the new
basis of universal freedom resulting from the Re-
bellion itself. If these things are found to be
required by wise statesmanship, then the right to
exact them, as conditions of restoring those States
to the enjoyment of their normal functions, is to
be found just where the Nation found the right to
crush the Rebellion and the incidental right of
emancipating slaves.
Now, distinctions between men as to their
rights, purely arbitrary and not founded in reason
or in the nature of things, are not wise, states-
manlike, or "republican" in the constitutional
sense. If they ever are wise and statesmanlike,
they become so only where oligarchies, privileged
orders and hereditary aristocracies are wise and
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 193
expedient. There are two kinds of republican
government, however, known to political science,
namely, aristocratic republics and democratic re-
publics : or those in which the government resides
with a few persons, or with a privileged body,
and those in which it is the Government of the
People. I cannot doubt that nearly all men are
prepared to admit that our governments, both
State and National, are constitutionally democra-
tic, representative republics. That theory of
government is expressly set forth in the Declara-
tion of Independence. The popular theory of
government is again declared in the preamble to
the Federal Constitution. The Federal Govern-
ment is elaborately constructed according to the
theory of popular and representative government,
and against the aristocratic theory, in its distin-
guishing features ; and, in divers places, the
Federal Constitution, in set terms, presupposes
the democratic and representative character of
the governments of the States, for example, by
assuming that they have legislatures, that their
legislatures are composed of more than one body,
and by aiming to prevent even all appearance of
aristocratic form by prohibiting the States from
granting any title of nobility. In his recent mes-
sage to Congress, President Johnson affirms " the
great distinguishing principle of the recognition
13
194 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
of the rights of man" as the fundamental idea
in all our governments. " The American sys-
tem," he adds, in the same paragraph, " rests on
the assertion of the equal right of every man to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to free-
dom of conscience, to the culture and exercise of
all his faculties." But, is it pretended that the
idea of a Government of the People, and for the
People, in the American sense, is inclusive of the
white race only, or is exclusive of men of African
descent? On what ground can the position
rest?
The citizenship of free men of color, even in
those States where no provision of law seemed to
include them in the category of voters, has been
frequently demonstrated, not only as a legal right,
but as a right asserted and enjoyed. Nay more ;
both under the Confederation, and at the time of
the adoption of the Constitution of the United
States, all free native born inhabitants of the
States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New
York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though
descended from African slaves, were not only
citizens of those States, but such of them as had
the other necessary qualifications, possessed the
franchise of electors on equal terms with other
citizens. And even Virginia declares, in her
ancient Bill of Rights, "that all men having suffi-
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 195
cient evidence of permanent common interest
with, and attachment to, the community, have the
right of suffrage." Wherever free colored men
were recognized as free citizens or subjects, but
were, nevertheless, not fully enfranchised, I think
that the explanation is found, not in the fact of
their mere color, nor in their antecedent servi-
tude, but in the idea of their possible lapse into
servitude again, of which condition their color
was a badge and a continuing presumption. The
policy of some States seems to have demanded
that slavery should be the prevailing condition of
all their inhabitants of African descent. In those
States, the possession of freedom by a colored
man has therefore been treated as if that condi-
tion was only exceptional and transient. But,
wherever the policy and legislation of a State
were originally dictated by men who saw through
the confusion of ideas occasioned by the presence
of slavery, there we are enabled to discern the
evidence of an unclouded purpose (with which
the American mind always intended to be consis-
tent) , namely : The maintenance of equality between
free citizens concerning civil rights, and the dis-
tribution of privileges according to capacity and
desert and not according to the accidents of birth.
And now that slavery has been rendered forever
impossible within any State or Territory of the
196 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
Union, by framing the great natural law of Uni-
versal Freedom into the organic law of the
Union, all the ancient disabilities which slavery
had made apparently attendant on African de-
scent, must disappear.
Whatever may be the rules regulating the dis-
tribution of political power among free citizens, in
the organization of such a republican government
as that guaranteed by the National Constitution,
descent is neither the evidence of right, nor the
ground of disfranchisement. The selection of a
fraction or class of the great body of freemen in
the Civil State, to be permanently invested with
its entire political power, — (selected by mere
human predestination, irrespective of merit), —
that power to be incommunicable to the freemen
of another class, — the two classes, of rulers and
ruled, governors and governed, to be determined
by the accident of birth, and all the consequences
of that accident to descend by generation to their
children, — seems to me to be the establishment
of an hereditary aristocracy of birth, the creation
of a privileged order, inconsistent both with the
substance and the essential form of American re-
publicanism, unstatesmanlike and unwise; and
(in the Rebel States) in every sense dangerous
and unjust.
To demand a certain qualification of intelli-
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 197
gence is eminently safe, and consists with the
interests and rights of all. It is as reasonable as
to require a certain maturity of age. They who
are the representatives of the political power of
society, acting not only for themselves, but also
for the women and children, who too belong to it ;
representing the interests of the wives, mothers,
sisters, daughters, infant sons, and the posterity
of us all, ought to constitute an audience reason-
ably competent to hear. And, since the congre-
gation of American voters is numbered by mil-
lions, and covers a continent, rt cannot hear with
its ears all that it needs to know; but must
learn intelligently much that it needs to know,
through the printed page and by means of its
eyes. The protection of the mass of men against
the deceptions of local demagogues, and against
their own prejudices hereafter, as well as the
common safety, calls for the requirement of the
capacity to read the mother tongue, as a condi-
tion of coming for the first time to the ballot-box.
Let this be required at the South, and immediately
the whole Southern community will be aroused
to the absolute necessity of demanding free schools
and popular education. These are, more than all
things else, to be coveted, both for the preserva-
tion of public liberty, and for the temporal salva-
tion of the toiling masses of our own Saxon and
198 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
Norman blood, whom, alike with the African
slave, the oppression of ages has involved in a
common disaster.
I think that the wisest and most intelligent
persons in the South are not ignorant of the im-
portance of raising the standard of intelligence
among voters; and of extending the right to
vote so as to include those who are of compe-
tent intellect, notwithstanding the recent disabil-
ity of color. There is evidence that they are
not unwilling to act consistently with the under-
standing, example,"and constitutional precedents
of the fathers of the Republic ; consistently with
the ancient practice of the States, coeval with
the organic law of the nation, established by the
very men who made that law, who used and
adopted the very phrase, " a republican form of
government," of the meaning of which their
own practice was a contemporary interpretation.
But if the conquering power of the Nation, if
the victorious arm of the Union is paralyzed ; if
the Federal Government, standing behind the
ramparts of defensive war, wielding its weapons,
both of offense in the hour of struggle, and of
diplomacy in the hour of triumph, is utterly
powerless to stipulate for the execution of this
condition ; then I confess I do not know how the
best and wisest in the South will be enabled,
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 199
deserted and alone, to stand up on its behalf
against the jealousy of ignorance and the tradi-
tions of prejudice.
If the measures which I have attempted to
delineate are found to be impracticable, then
Congress has still the right to refuse to the
Rebel States readmission to the enjoyment of
their representative power, until amendments to
the Federal Constitution shall have been ob-
tained, adequate to the exigency. Nor can the
people of the Rebel States object to the delay.
They voluntarily withdrew from Congress ; they
themselves elected the attitude of disunion.
They broke the agreements of the Constitution :
not we. They chose their own time, opportunity
and occasion to make war on the Nation, and to
repudiate the Union. They certainly cannot
now dictate to us the time or the terms. Again,
I repeat, the just discretion of the Nation, exer-
cised in good faith towards all, must govern.
The Federal Union was formed, first of all,
" to establish justice." " Justice," in the lan-
guage of statesmen and of jurists, has had a def-
inition, for more than two thousand years, exact,
perfect, and well understood.
It is found in the Institutes of Justinian, —
" Constans et perpetua voluntas, jus suum cuique tribuendi."
" The constant and perpetual will to secure to every man his
OWN RIGHT."
200 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
I believe I .have shown that under our Federal
Constitution, —
1. All the people of the Rebel States must
share in the benefits to be derived from the exe-
cution of the national guarantee of republican
governments ;
2. That our " republican form of government "
demands " The maintenance of equality between
free citizens concerning civil rights, and the dis-
tribution of privileges according to capacity and
desert, and not according to the accidents of
birth;"
3. That people " of African descent," not less
than people of the white race, are included
within the category of free subjects and citizens
of the United States ;
4. That, in the distribution of political power,
under our form of government, " descent is
neither the evidence of right, nor the ground of
disfranchisement ; " so that
5. The disfranchisement of free citizens, for
the cause of " descent," or for any reason other
than lawful disqualification, as by non-residence,
immaturity, crime, or want of intelligence, vio-
lates their constitutional rights ;
»
6. That, in executing our national guarantee
of republican government to the people of the
Rebel States, we must secure the constitutional
civic liberties and franchises of all the people ;
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 201
7. That we have no right to omit to secure to
the new citizens, made free by the Union, in
war, their equality of rights before the law, and
their franchises of every sort, including the
electoral franchise, according to laws and regula-
tions, of universal, and not of unequal and ca-
pricious, application.
We have no right to evade our own duty.
We must not, by substituting a new basis for the
apportionment of Representatives in Congress,
give up the just rights of these citizens. In-
creasing the proportion of the political power of
the loyal States at the expense of the disloyal
States, by adopting their relative numbers of
legal voters instead of their relative populations,
while it might punish some States for not accord-
ing the suffrage to colored men, would not be
justice to the colored citizen. For justice de-
mands, " for every man his own right."
Will it be said that, by such means, we shall
strengthen our own power in the loyal States,
to protect the colored people in the South ? If
we will not yield to them justice now, on what
ground do we expect grace to give them "protec-
tion " hereafter ? You will have compromised
for a consideration, paid in an increase of your
own political power, your right to urge their vol-
untary enfranchisement on the white men of
202 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
the South. You will have bribed all the ele-
ments of political selfishness in the whole coun-
try, to combine against negro enfranchisement.
The States of the Rebellion will have no less
power than ever in the Senate ; and the men
who hold the privilege of electing representatives
to the lower house, will retain their privilege.
For the sake of doubling the delegation from
South Carolina, do you suppose that the monop-
oly of choosing three members would be surren-
dered by the whites, giving to the colored men
the chance to choose six ? Nay ; would the
monopolists gain anything by according the suf-
frage to the colored man, if they could them-
selves only retain the power to dictate three
representatives, and the colored people should
dictate the selection of the other three ?
The scheme to substitute legal voters, instead
of population, as the basis of representation in
Congress, will prove a delusion and a snare. By
diminishing the representative power of the
Southern States, in favor of other States, you
will not increase Southern love for the Union.
Nor, while Connecticut and Wisconsin refuse
the suffrage to men of color, will you be able to
convince the South that your amendment was
dictated by political principle, and not by politi-
cal cupidity. You will not diminish any honest
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 203
apprehension at extending the suffrage, but you
will inflame every prejudice and aggravate dis-
content. Meanwhile, the disfranchised freed-
man, hated by some because he is black, con-
temned by some because he has been a slave,
feared by some because of the antagonisms of
society, is condemned to the condition of a hope-
less pariah of a merciless civilization. In the
community, he is not of it. He neither belongs
to a master, nor to society. Bodily present in
the midst of the society composing the State,
he adds nothing to its weight in the political
balance of the nation ; and, therefore, he stands
in the way, occupies the room, and takes the
place, which might be enjoyed as opportunities
by a white immigrant who would contribute by
his presence to its representative power. Your
policy would inflame animosity and aggravate
oppression, for at least the lifetime of a genera-
tion, before it would open the door to enfran-
chisement.
Civil society is not an aggregation of individ-
uals. According to the order of nature, and of
the Divine economy, it is an aggregation of fam-
ilies. The adult males of the family vote because
the welfare of the women and children of the
family is identical with theirs ; and it is intrusted
to their affection and fidelity, whether at the bal-
204 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
lot-box or on the battle field. But, while the vot-
ing men of a given community represent the
welfare of its women and children, they do not
represent that of another community. The men,
women and children of Massachusetts are alike
concerned in the ideas and interests of Massa-
chusetts. But the very theory of representa-
tion implies that the ideas and interests of one
State are not identical with those of another.
On what ground, then, can a State on the Pa-
cific or the Ohio gain preponderance in Congress
over New Jersey or Massachusetts by reason of
its greater number of males, while it may have
even a less number of people ? The halls of
legislation are the arenas of debate, not of mus-
cular prowess. The intelligence, the opinions,
the wishes, and the influence of women, social
and domestic, stand for something — for much
— in the public affairs of civilized and refined
society. I deny the just right of the Govern-
ment to banish woman from the count. She
may not vote, but she thinks ; she persuades
her husband : she instructs her son ; and through
them, at least, she has a right to be heard in the
government. Her existence, and the existence
of her children, are to be considered in the
State.
No matter who changes; let Massachusetts,
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 205
at least, stand by all the fundamental principles
of free, constitutional, republican government.
The President is the tribune of the people.
Let him be chosen directly by the popular elec-
tion. The Senate represents the reserved rights
and the equality of the States. Let the Sena-
tors continue to be chosen by the Legislatures
of the States. The House represents the opin-
ions, interests, and equality of the people of each
and every State. Let the people of the respec-
tive States elect their representatives in numbers
proportional to the numbers of their people.
And let the legal qualifications of the voters, in
the election of President, Vice President, and
Representatives in Congress, be fixed by a uni-
form, equal, democratic, constitutional rule, of
universal application. Let this franchise be en-
joyed " according to capacity and desert, and not
according to the accidents of birth." Congress
may, and ought, to initiate an amendment grant-
ing the right to vote for President, Vice Presi-
dent and Representatives in Congress, to colored
men, in all the States, being citizens and able to
read, who would, by the laws of the States where
they reside, be competent to vote if they were
white. Without disfranchising existing voters,
it should apply the qualification to white men
also. And the amendment ought to leave the
206 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
election of President and Vice President directly
in the hands of the people, without the interven-
tion of electoral colleges. Then the poorest,
humblest, and most despised men, being citizens
and competent to read, and thus competent,
with reasonable intelligence, to represent others,
would find audience through the ballot-box.
The President, who is the Grand Tribune of all
the People, and the direct delegates of the Peo-
ple in the popular branch of the National Legis-
lature, would feel their influence. This amend-
ment would give efficiency to the one already
adopted abolishing Slavery throughout the
Union. The two amendments, taken together,
would practically accomplish, or enable Congress
to fulfill, the whole duty of the nation to those
who are now its dependent wards.
I am satisfied that the mass of thinking men at
the South accept the present condition of things
in good faith ; and I am also satisfied that with
the support of a firm policy from the President
and Congress, in aid of the efforts of their good
faith, and with the help of a conciliatory and gen-
erous disposition on the part of the North, espe-
cially on the part of those States most identified
with the plan of emancipation, the measures
needed for permanent and universal welfare can
surely be obtained. There ought now to be a
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 207
vigorous prosecution of the Peace — just as vigor-
ous as our recent prosecution of the War. We
ought to extend our hands with cordial good- will
to meet the proffered hands of the South ; de-
manding no attitude of humiliation from any ;
inflicting no acts of humiliation upon any; re-
specting the feelings of the conquered ; — not-
withstanding the question of right and wrong
between the parties belligerent. We ought, by
all the means and instrumentalities of peace ; by
all the thrifty methods of industry ; by all the
recreative agencies of education and religion ; to
help rebuild the waste places and restore order,
society, prosperity. Without industry and busi-
ness there can be no progress. In their absence,
civilized man even recedes towards barbarism.
Let Massachusetts bear in mind the not unnat-
ural suspicion which the past has engendered. I
trust that she is able — filled with emotions of
boundless joy, and gratitude to Almighty God
who has given such victory and such honor to
the Right — to exercise faith in His goodness,
without vain glory ; and to exercise charity,
without weakness, towards those who have held
the attitude of her enemies.
The offense of War has met its appropriate
punishment by the hand of War. In this hour
of triumph, honor and religion alike forbid one
208 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
act, one word, of vengeance or resentment.
Patriotism and Christianity unite the arguments
,of earthly welfare, and the motives of heavenly
inspiration, to persuade us to put off all jealousy
and all fear, and to move forward as citizens and
as men, in the work of social and economic re-
organization, each one doing with his might what-
ever his hand findeth to do.
We might wish that it were possible for Mas-
sachusetts justly to avoid her part in the work
of political reorganization. But, in spite of
whatever misunderstanding of her purpose or
character, she must abide her destiny. She is a
part of the Nation. The Nation, for its own
ends and its own advantage, as a measure of war,
took out of the hands of the masters, their slaves.
It holds them therefore, in its hands, as freedmen.
It must place them somewhere. It must dispose
of them somehow. It cannot delegate the trust.
It has no right to drop them, to desert them.
For, by its own voluntary act, it assumed their
guardianship and all its attendant responsibilities,
before the present generation, and all the coming
generations, of mankind. I know not how well,
or how ill, they might be treated by the people
of the States where they reside. I only know
that there is a point beyond which the Nation
has no right to incur any hazard. And, while
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 209
the fidelity of the Nation need not abridge the
humanity of the States ; on the other hand our
confidence in those States cannot be pleaded be-
fore the bar of God, or of history, in defense of
any neglect of our own duty. Let their people
remember that Massachusetts has never deceived
them. To her ideas of duty and her theory of
the Government, she has been faithful. If they
were ever misled or betrayed by others into the
snare of attempted secession, and the risks of
war, her trumpet at least gave no uncertain sound.
She has fulfilled her engagements in the past,
and she intends to fulfill them in the future. She
knows that the reorganization of the States in
rebellion carries with it consequences which come
home to the firesides and the consciences of her
own children ; for, as citizens of the Union, they
become liable to assume the defense of those gov-
ernments, when reorganized, against every men-
ace, whether of foreign invasion or of domestic
violence. Her bayonets may be invoked to put
down insurgents of whatever color, and what-
ever the cause, whether rightful or wrongful,
which may have moved their discontent. And,
when they are called for, they will march. If
she were capable of evading her duty now, she
would be capable of violating her obligations
hereafter. If she is anxious to prevent grave
14
210 VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.
errors, it is because she appreciates, from her
past experience, the danger of admitting such
errors into the structure of government. She is
watchful against them now, because, in the sin-
cere fidelity of her purpose, she is made keenly
alive to the duties of the present, by contempla-
ting the inevitable responsibilities of the future.
In sympathy with the heart and hope of the
nation, she will abide by her faith. Undisturbed
by the impatient, undismayed by delay, " with
malice towards none, with charity for all ; with
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the
right," she will persevere. Impartial, Democrat-
ic, Constitutional Liberty is invincible. The
rights of human nature are sacred ; maintained
by confessors, and heroes, and martyrs ; reposing
on the sure foundation of the commandments of
God.
" Through plots and counterplots ;
Through gain and loss; through glory and disgrace;
Along the plains where passionate Discord rears
Eternal Babel; still the holy stream
Of human happiness glides on !
There is One above
Sways the harmonious mystery of the world."
Gentlemen : For all the favors, unmerited
and unmeasured, which I have enjoyed frQm the
people of Massachusetts ; from the councillors,
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 211
magistrates, and officers by whom I have been
surrounded in the government ; and from the
members of five successive legislatures; there
is no return in my power to render, but the sin-
cere acknowledgments of a grateful heart.
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